Ramachandra
Guha on the
relevance of
Gandhi in
modern-day
India >Page 10

YOU CAN DO IT TOO

On 1 January, the copyright on
Gandhi’s books ended. We revisit his
autobiography >Page 8

LOST LESSONS

How the floundering discipline of
Gandhian studies might be set for a
revival overdue for decades >Page 12

A mixed media installation by
Anandajit Ray plays out the tension
between industrial and village
economies. At Saffronart Gallery,
Mumbai, till 15 February.

THE GOOD LIFE

SHOBA NARAYAN

WHAT WOULD
GANDHI DO?

I

received an interesting Internet petition
from a gentleman I have never met. To mark
the Mahatma’s 61st death anniversary, he
wanted us to switch off our cellphones and
BlackBerrys for one whole day to send a
message to Messrs Anil Ambani and Sunil Mittal
that we Indians would not tolerate “fascists as
future prime ministers”. The politician in
question is, of course, Narendra Modi, who has
recently been proposed and endorsed (by the
two corporate chieftains) for the post. >Page 4

FATHER TO SON

READING ROOM

FEROZ ABBAS KHAN

HOW TO BRING THE
MAHATMA HOME

M

ahatma Gandhi’s ideas were not new.
He carried forward concepts such as
honesty, non-violence and living an
austere life, which had been a part of Indian
philosophy (such as Jainism) and thought for a
long time. But what Gandhi really did well was
reiterate them and live by them to his last breath.
He followed what he believed in much more
intensely than other people. There was no
difference between his words and his deeds and
that is what makes Gandhi admirable. >Page 4

TABISH KHAIR

THE BOOKERNOBEL CUT

L

ast year was not a bad one for South
Asian fiction. Four authors of South
Asian origin were on the Booker longlist
and the prize was bagged by one of them. But then
the Sahitya Akademi struck back: No Indian
English book was “found eligible for the honour”
of an Akademi award in 2008. 1:0 in favour of
bhasha literature (literature in Indian languages)?
An ungracious controversy has been raging
between some writers of bhasha literature and
Indian English authors for decades now. >Page 16

JUST ONE MORE THING
With Steve Jobs’ health a concern,
what will happen to the iconic
‘stevenote’? We look at 25 years of
classic presentations >Page 14

DON’T MISS
WSJ

For today’s business news
> Question of Answers—
the quiz with a difference
> Markets Watch

HOME PAGE L3

LOUNGE

SATURDAY, JANUARY 31, 2009 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

First published in
February 2007 to
serve as an
unbiased and
clear-minded
chronicler of the
Indian Dream.

he question of whether India
should have a “military” parade
on Republic Day has been much
debated over the last few years. I for
one was still reeling from US President Barack Obama’s political mega
show and after repeatedly hinting to
the husband that we dance cheekto-cheek to Etta James’ At Last, I
convinced him to at least accompany me to the parade.
Now I’m not a parade-watcher. I
have a short attention span, I can’t
sit still unless I’m staring at a movie
screen and I certainly can’t tell my
Jaguars from my DorniMARCH ers. But after Obama, I
wanted a shot of Indian
jingoism; I wanted to feel some
national feeling. So off we went,
braving the roadblocks and diversions, criss-crossing roads named
after politicians alive and dead, past
security forces of all acronym (CISF,
BSF, CRPF, DP, HG), through eight
detailed car checks until finally we
were there, seated in a spot across
from the President.
I can’t remember the last time I
saw so many men wearing so many
different types of headgear. The
husband, who grew up with
parades, and who would much
rather have watched this one on
Doordarshan (with his breakfast
firmly in hand), played expert commentator: “Look, an admiral with

his freshly Brassoed sword”; “Watch
the turrets of the Bheeshma T90
S/SK swivel. They were banned
from doing that for many years”;
“The cavalry became the tank battalion in modern warfare.”
The President drove up in a black
stretch Mercedes with her guest
Nursultan Nazarbayev, the president of Kazakhstan. For a Bombay
girl whose only public exposure to
the national anthem is the slow-mo
Lata-Asha version before every
movie at the Adlabs multiplex, the
band version accompanied by the
dull, reverberating thwack of the
21-gun (cannon actually) salute was
quite something.
I was quite taken with the President’s Guard, upright six-footers on
stunning bay steeds that are a minimum of 15.2 hands with a full
mane. I could just imagine Mumbai’s chatterati oohing and aahing
over these uniformed men, all
qualified paratroopers.
Mumbai was in the spotlight
when the Ashok Chakras were presented. “Posthumous means marne
ke baad,” a mother explained to her
child, as the wives (and one
mother) lined up to accept the
peace-time gallantry awards on
behalf of their deceased, brave
ones. Six of the 11 recipients died
fighting the terrorists in Mumbai.
Two fought terrorists in Jammu and

PLANNER | WHAT WOULD YOU DO FOR LOVE?
With Valentine’s Day around the corner, we scouted for
ways you can pamper your loved one
ARVIND YADAV/HINDUSTAN TIMES

1

Display your obliging side,
with a package from French
spa and salon Jean-Claude
Biguine. You will both get a
manicure, a consultation by a
hair stylist, followed by a haircut
of your partner’s choice. Dangerous, yes, but what’s love
without a little excitement? The
package is priced at Rs1,900 per
couple, at Jean-Claude Biguine
at Bandra, Mumbai
(022-65222211); and The Collective, Vittal Mallya Road, Bangalore (080-67678877).

2

Chenab Impex, an importer
of gourmet foods, has special
aphrodisiac hampers for the
occasion. Some highlights of
the goodies you get: Amedei
dark chocolate and Urbani
whole truffles from Italy, Lune
de Miel (honey) from France,
and Blue Elephant oyster sauce
from Thailand. At Foodland and
Nature’s Basket in Mumbai;
Apna Bazaar in New Delhi and
Spar, Thom’s Cafe and Nilgiris
in Bangalore, or order online
at www.chenabimpex.com.
For Rs7,000.

Love and heritage: Celebrate the day on a train.

3

If you’re looking for something risque,
head straight to Boudoir London for a
leather box filled with edible lingerie and
handcuffs and chocolate and strawberry
body paint. At Boudoir London, Juhu Tara
Road, Mumbai (022-26607530), or order
online at www.boudoirlondon.in for delivery all over India. Prices start at Rs3,900.

4

If you’ve had enough frivolity, pack in
an evening of culture. The Symphony
Orchestra of India presents the Sixth
Celebrity Concert season. On 14 February,
Welsh musician and renowned composer
Karl Jenkins, will conduct a performance
of Adiemus, one of his most popular
works. Kazakh violin virtuoso Marat
Bisengaliev will perform Sarikiz, a concerto written specially for him by Jenkins.
At Jamshed Bhabha Theatre, Mumbai, at
6.30pm. Tickets, Rs800-2,000. Call
022-22824567 or visit www.soimumbai.in

5

With Valentine’s Day falling on a second Saturday, you can take an overnight
trip to Alwar from New Delhi aboard the
luxury heritage Fairy Queen Express (the
Fairy Queen takes two trips a month, on
the second and fourth Saturdays, between
October and February). This is among the
oldest running heritage steam locomotives

and accommodates only 50 people in one
trip. The train starts from the Delhi Cantonment railway station at 9am and
reaches Alwar at 3pm, where an overnight
stay is organized at the Sariska tiger
reserve. It leaves the next day at 1pm for
Delhi Cantt. The overnight trip costs
Rs8,600 (taxes extra) per person and
includes the train fare and hotel stay. Call
9910161413 for details.

6

Looking for a romantic dinner? Take a
flight to Udaipur, the city of lakes, then
drive for an hour to reach the Devi Garh
Resort which is organizing a special V-day
dinner at its terrace restaurant. There’s a
red-and-black theme, rose petals, candles
and live music. Only 40 spots are available
at Rs3,700 per person (taxes extra) and dinner is a four-course fusion meal. If you want
to spend the Valentine’s Day weekend at
Devi Garh, book yourself in a Garden Suite
for Rs29,000 (the package includes a twonight stay, three meals for a couple, taxes
extra) and enjoy the special Adam and Eve
treatment package at the spa. At Rs4,800
(taxes extra), the package entitles both of
you to a massage and a foot treatment. For
details, log on to www.deviresorts.com
Parizaad Khan and Seema Chowdhry

Heady parade: Central Industrial
Security Force officials; you see them
at the airport every time you travel.
Kashmir, one died in the Batla
House encounter in New Delhi last
September, one died battling militants in the jungles of Meghalaya,
and one fighting Naxalites in Orissa.
Who can imagine what it must be
like for Maya, Shanti Devi, Kavita,
Vinita, Smita or Tarabai to stand up
there in front of all those people,
waiting till the announcer has finished explaining to the crowds how
the man in their family died before
they collect their commendation
(and pat on the left shoulder) from
the President. Really, the awards
were a summary of all that went
wrong in India last year.
Next, the parade commander
was driven through Rajpath in a

chrome-plated jeep and thus began
our show of military strength. The
BrahMos missile, the OSA-AK
weapon system, tanks with mine
ploughs, amphibious vehicles,
advanced light helicopters, the
menacing, three-storey-high Agni
III missile and more weapon systems. This was another India, not
New India, not Real India, just a
Parallel India that crosses our lives
only once a year.
The best part for me was not the
31 Dare Devils and their human
pyramid on nine Enfields; it was the
brightly-coloured, smart bands and
marching contingents from the regiments that don’t occupy any of our
mind space as we shuttle from work
to home and back, trapped in our
own urban reality/rut. The elite BSF
marching contingent and its striking camel party; the Assam Rifles
band with its swaying bagpipe players; the Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB),
once a secret guerrilla force; the
reclusive Ladakh Scouts; the naval
and air force marching contingents
(marching is not their strength, the
husband pointed out), the folks
from CISF (the same men you
encounter at the airport, only
dressed in their smart ceremonial
outfits), and the best marchers, the
Delhi Police.
In short, I found things other than
Obama to think about. And Kadam
Kadam Badhaye Ja has replaced At
Last as my favourite song.
Write to lounge@livemint.com

inbox

Write to us at
lounge@livemint.com
ON HIS OWN FEET

Your article ‘Everybody loves a winner’, 24
January, narrated the other part of the
Harshvardhan Nawathe story which I was
not aware of. I appreciate the efforts made
by Nawathe to create a name of his own.
SANDEEP

THE ART OF BEING GANDHI
Many of the
images used
to illustrate
our special
issue ‘Bapu
& us’, to
commemorate Mahatma Gandhi’s
61st death anniversary on 30
January, are sourced from ‘Bapu’, an
ongoing group exhibition of 12
artists. Curated by Gayatri Sinha
and put together by Saffronart, the
artists interpret Gandhi through
different mediums, and in the
process, attempt to answer the
question: How do we locate Gandhi
in modern India? At Saffronart
Gallery, Industry Manor, 3rd floor,
Prabhadevi, Mumbai, till 15 February.
ON THE COVER: A MIXED MEDIA
INSTALLATION BY ANANDAJIT RAY/ ‘BAPU’
AT SAFFRONART GALLERY, MUMBAI

L4

Bapu & us

LOUNGE

SATURDAY, JANUARY 31, 2009 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

Bapu & us

WHAT WOULD GANDHI DO?
Is the measure of a leader economic
growth or human rights? If Gandhi were
Modi, how would he answer this poser?
THE GOOD LIFE
SHOBA NARAYAN

I

received an interesting Internet
petition from a gentleman I have
never met. To mark the
Mahatma’s 61st death anniversary, he
wanted us to switch off our cellphones
and BlackBerrys for one whole day to
send a message to Messrs Anil
Ambani and Sunil Mittal that we
Indians would not tolerate “fascists as
future prime ministers”. The politician
in question is, of course, Narendra
Modi, who has recently been
proposed and endorsed (by the two
corporate chieftains) for the post.
Every now and then, and nowadays
with increasing frequency, I mull the
question: What would Gandhi have
done? How would he have reacted to
Modi’s actions? Is the measure of a
leader economic growth or human
rights? Why not both, you will ask.
Yes, but if this particular neta’s tenure
has been marked by extremes in both
these areas, which one will count
towards eligibility for higher office?
Modi is lauded by businesspeople
throughout India for making his state
an economic powerhouse. By
deregulating entire sectors and
establishing an accessible,
business-friendly bureaucracy, Modi
has attracted foreign direct investment
(FDI) worth millions of dollars into his
state. Yet, he is a tainted politician
who has been accused of standing by,
Nero-like, during the 2002

post-Godhra riots. And that, some say,
is the charitable description, hinting
at complicity. Modi’s own party, the
BJP, called the riots a “stain upon
the country’s history”. The US
revoked Modi’s tourist visa, stating
that any foreign government official
who “was responsible for or directly
carried out, at any time, particularly
severe violations of religious
freedom” was ineligible.
At what price growth? While it is
true that Modi has raised the
standard of living in Gujarat, it is also
true that the state’s Muslims feel
marginalized like never before. Today,
Gujarat is basking in the afterglow of
having touched a 15% average
industrial growth rate. Much of its
growth is attributed to Modi. Does
that make him a credible candidate
for higher office? What would Gandhi
have done if he were Modi?
The easy answer is that Gandhi
would never have let the post-Godhra
riots happen. Put that aside for a
moment. If Gandhi were Modi now,
with aspirations to national office
while still fighting off character
allegations, what would he do? I
believe that Gandhi would find a way
to take ownership of the massacre.
Similarly, Modi must find a way to
acknowledge his role as a leader
during that time. He must find a way
to apologize to his state for failing in
his role of maintaining law and order
at a critical moment. And he must
figure out a way to recompense the
victims. There are many precedents
that Modi can look to. Somehow I
doubt that he will choose the

Nuremberg trials model as
a way of bringing the
perpetrators to justice. But
he could use South Africa’s
Truth and Reconciliation
Commission that focused
on the victims of apartheid
as a way of righting past
evils. Or, he could simply
look at Gandhi.
The Mahatma had
flaws—he was a cruel
husband and a mostly
absent, if intensely anxious,
father—but his moral
compass was as unwavering
as it was right. How else
could a frail man sway a
nation and chase out a
powerful empire through
ahimsa (non-violence) and
satyagraha? Gandhi
conducted peculiar
experiments with young
women—sleeping and
bathing nude together to
strengthen his chastity—but
he didn’t suffer from the
moral ambivalence that
plagues much of Indian
industry today. Ever the
champion of human rights,
he even put it ahead of
nation-building. When
Patel, Nehru, Azad and
Jinnah were pondering the
semantics and logistics of
independence, Gandhi was in the
largely Muslim areas of East Bengal
(now Bangladesh) and Bihar, trying to
stop communal violence.
Gandhi was an expert at
reconciling irreconcilables, something
that every politician must do. He
married the sublime and the
mundane—talking national politics
while spinning the charkha (spinning
wheel) and singing bhajans. He was a
keen strategist who placed his cards
on the table but also played them

JAGANNATH PANDA

Bapu & us

An untitled work of acrylic
and fabric on canvas by
the Gurgaon-based artist.
Gandhi is projected as a
figure on the margins of
the skyscraper-filled
modern city—and a place
for sparrows to perch on.
At Saffronart Gallery,
Mumbai, till 15 February

well. He collected friends and
nurtured political alliances with the
opposition—such as the one with
Jinnah. But there is one overarching
principle that defined Gandhi and
permeated everything he did.
Unlike Modi, Gandhi didn’t look at
the world through “we-they” eyes. He
never viewed people as Hindu or
Muslim, Brahmin or untouchable,
British or Indian, rich or poor. Even
though he was fighting the British, he
refused to think of them as the

enemy. As Rajmohan Gandhi says in
his excellent book, Mohandas: “For
many Indians, Gandhi’s position—‘I
cannot and will not hate Englishmen;
nor will I bear their yoke’—was hard
to comprehend. For them fighting
and hating went together.”
If Modi does a Gandhi, he may
well suffer a loss. But as Narayana
Murthy said in a television interview,
sticking to your principles usually
involves a loss of some kind. If Modi
finds a way to address the carnage,
either through an apology or some
sort of reconciliation commission, it
may end his chances for higher
office. For now. But it will prove to
the nation that this able
administrator also has the makings
of a statesman. Modi’s mea culpa
will allow him to rise above the
“we-they” elements of his party.
Can a 15% industrial growth
rate make up for the loss of 1,000
lives? In its answer lies Modi’s legacy.
And his future.
Shoba Narayan plans to write a series
titled “What would Gandhi do?” Write
to her at thegoodlife@livemint.com
www.livemint.com
Read Shoba’s previous Lounge columns at
www.livemint.com/shoba-narayan

THE MAHATMA’S CHILDREN
Honesty, keeping a promise, non-violence
and social responsibility are some
Gandhian concepts your child must imbibe
FATHER TO SON
FEROZ ABBAS KHAN

M

ahatma Gandhi’s ideas were
not new. He carried forward
concepts such as honesty,
non-violence and living an austere
life, which had been a part of Indian
philosophy (such as Jainism) and
thought for a long time. But what
Gandhi really did well was reiterate
them and live by them to his last
breath. He followed what he believed
in much more intensely than other
people. There was no difference
between his words and his deeds and
that is what makes Gandhi admirable.
There are four concepts which
Gandhi followed that I believe are
relevant even today and I want my
13-year-old son to understand and
imbibe these.

Speak the truth, always

Adolescents nowadays know that
truth has consequences and lying has
benefits. So it is very tough to
convince them to be truthful all the
time. As parents, it is important that
we make them understand that the
consequences of speaking the truth
are not always bad and that truth is
not to be feared. Sometime back,
someone I knew picked up something
at school that did not belong to him.
When his mother found out, she had
a chat with him and asked him to
return it. He was scared that his
principal would be upset if he owned

up and that his friends would make
fun of him. But his mother took him
to school and told him that he must
own up. Finally, he did that. After that
incident the boy realized the power of
truth and why one should not be
afraid to speak the truth always.

Keep a promise

Last year, I attended an annual
inter-school competition organized by
Mani Bhavan Gandhi Sangrahalaya,
Mumbai. There was a little girl who
wrote a piece on Gandhi. She said the
thing she liked best about Gandhi was
that “Bapu made a promise that he
would get us independence and he
kept that promise.” I was very
touched at how she was able to
recognize that and assign the role of
promise-keeper to Gandhi.
As a parent, if you want your child
to honour any commitment, you must
learn to do the same first.

Do not initiate violence

Nowadays children tend to believe that
Gandhi stood for cowardice because
he advocated the path of non-violence.
In today’s context, it is very tough to
tell children to turn the other cheek,
especially if they are facing a bully at
school or are threatened in some other
way. The concept of total non-violence
and its spiritual context is understood
over a period of time and most
teenagers are probably not at a point
to understand it.
I like to explain to my son that if
you disagree with somebody or
dislike someone, it is not right to
express that through violence.

HARIKRISHNA KATRAGADDA/MINT

“I don’t like you, or your ideas, or
what you believe” should not mean
that it is okay to get into a physical
fight. Neither are discomfort, dislike
and disagreement reasons enough for
aggression, nor does attacking
someone make you a brave
person—that is the message a parent
must get across.
It is important to explain to
teenagers that if you are operationally
in a position where you can exercise
the option of not hitting somebody or
if you can, through a conversation,
resolve a disagreement, then that is
the first path to take.
Violence as a measure of getting
someone to agree to your point of
view is unacceptable, and your child
must know that.

Contribute to society

Children nowadays indulge in a huge
amount of spending. Things that we
aspired to in our youth are a necessity
for the children of today. I like the
way Gandhi contributed to society
and I think that this is something that
should be inculcated in children at a
young age. For example, encourage
your children to share some part of
the money they receive on occasions
such as birthdays and festivals for
causes that they want to support, such
as the welfare of stray dogs or saving
trees. Make them aware, but do not
force them to do this. Teaching a
child the concept of denying himself
something so that someone else can
benefit is an extremely valuable
lesson to learn, but this will come
only if parents follow the concept of
social responsibility themselves.
Feroz Abbas Khan is a theatre
director and has directed the film
Gandhi My Father.
As told to Seema Chowdhry
Write to lounge@livemint.com

Life lessons: Gandhi did not differentiate between his words and deeds.

LOUNGE

gandhi
&us

L5

SATURDAY, JANUARY 31, 2009 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

Gandhi & us
GANDHI AT CROSSROADS
The Mahatma’s
statues can
like
Bapulook
& us
Advani,
Groucho Marx
or even a high
school teacher

····························
apu doesn’t look like
Bapu any more. Or at
least that is what seems
to be the point of artist Vivek
Vilasini’s work Vernacular
Chants II—a set of nine
photographs of Gandhi statues
and busts taken in south India.
The idea was born when
Vilasini visited the town of
Attur in Tamil Nadu to pick up
some granite for his sculpting
work. On his way to the granite
dealer, he had to take a turn at

B

the town’s Gandhi statue. “I
found that it looked nothing
like the great man,” he recalls.
“Instead, Groucho Marx was
staring down at me. That’s
when the idea of putting this
work together occurred to me.”
Soon after, Vilasini set off
on a two-week expedition with
his brother to photograph
Gandhi statues and busts, and
managed to capture 30
cement sculptures. Nine of
these make Vernacular Chants
II. Most of them have been
shot in Tamil Nadu.
“The visualization of

HER HYMN

Singer MS Subbulakshmi’s gift to Gandhi
HINDUSTAN TIMES ARCHIVES

B Y S AMANTH S UBRAMANIAN
samanth.s@livemint.com

···································
n M.S. Subbulakshmi, an immortal
hymn found an immortal voice. For
many years, Subbulakshmi sang
Mahatma Gandhi’s favourite bhajan,
Vaishnava Janato, towards the end of her
Carnatic music concerts, regularly
moving her audiences to tears. “But you
know,” says Gowri Ramnarayan,
Subbulakshmi’s grandniece and for long
her vocal support in concerts, “MS amma Voice of god: Subbulakshmi was
overwhelmed by Gandhi’s praise.
was never entirely satisfied with the
melody of Vaishnava Janato, with the
maudlin, Vaidyanathan decided, would
way the tune went up and down, up and
be Darbari Kaanada.
down. But there was another song,
Through that night-long recording
brilliantly tuned and conceived—and the
session, Vaidyanathan set Hari Tum Haro
story behind that is a fascinating one.”
to music, for Subbulakshmi to learn and
In 1947, roughly a week before
record immediately. The spool tape left for
Gandhi’s 78th birthday, Indian National
New Delhi the following morning, on
Congress leader Sucheta Kriplani
2 October, in the care of Sadasivam’s
telephoned the Chennai offices of the
nephew, aboard a Dakota flight. Thus, on
magazine Kalki and asked to speak to
the evening of his birthday, Gandhi was
T. Sadasivam, the magazine’s co-founder
able to listen to his beloved bhajan.
and Subbulakshmi’s husband. On 2
Subbulakshmi would learn what he had to
October, there were to be a few musical
say about the music only later, from
performances for Gandhi in New Delhi.
Maniben Patel’s diary. “Her voice is
Would Subbulakshmi be able to come to
exceedingly sweet,” Patel had quoted
the Capital on the day, to sing one of his
Gandhi as saying. “To sing a bhajan is one
favourite bhajans, Hari Tum Haro?
thing; to sing it by losing oneself in god is
Sadasivam had to decline politely. “He
quite different.”
told her that Kunjamma (as he and many
Subbulakshmi and Sadasivam would
others called Subbulakshmi) did not know
meet Gandhi soon after that, during a trip
that song,” says Ramnarayan. “Also, for
some family reasons, MS amma could not to New Delhi in January 1948. “Gandhiji
was so depressed because of the
go to Delhi that particular week, so
communal riots,” Ramnarayan recalls. So
Sadasivam said, ‘No, you’ll have to find
Sadasivam urged Radha, their little
somebody else.’” But the matter did not
daughter, to dance for Gandhi as
rest there. Just a day or two before
Subbulakshmi sang. “Gandhiji’s laughter
Gandhi’s birthday, Kriplani called
was said to have rang out in peal after peal
Sadasivam again. “Gandhiji would rather
hear Subbulakshmi recite the verse on a
as Radha danced,” she says. “At the end of
tape,” she is said to have told Sadasivam,
their visit, Gandhi’s followers thanked
“than hear anybody else sing it.”
them, because they hadn’t seen him smile
After that highest of compliments, there in such a long time.”
was no way Subbulakshmi and Sadasivam
On the evening of 30 January 1948,
could refuse. So, at 9pm, they picked up
Subbulakshmi was at home in Chennai,
their friend R. Vaidyanathan—
listening to AIR’s recorded broadcast of the
Ramnarayan calls him “a pianist and an
annual music festival at Tiruvaiyaru, which
eccentric genius”—and made their way to had been held earlier that month.
the All India Radio (AIR) recording
Suddenly, the broadcast was interrupted,
studios in Chennai. There, Vaidyanathan
and an announcer broke the unvarnished
mulled over the lyrics of Hari Tum Haro,
news: Mahatma Gandhi had just been
Meera’s prayer to Lord Krishna. “You who assassinated at his prayer meeting in New
saved Draupadi, you who are so
Delhi. As Subbulakshmi listened in horror,
compassionate,” the song pleads, “remove the brief announcement ended and AIR,
all the sorrows of the people.” The best
stuck for further details, segued into a
raga to express the pathos and grandeur
musical tribute. The song, inevitably, was
of the song without meandering into the
Hari Tum Haro in Subbulakshmi’s voice.

I

Mahatma Gandhi seems to
have become imaginative, and
it speaks volumes about the
open-mindedness of Indians,”
Vilasini says. A Gandhi statue
that he found outside a
municipality office in a town
near Salem, Tamil Nadu, looked
uncannily like Bharatiya Janata
Party (BJP) leader Lal Krishna
Advani. The resemblance
probably has nothing to do with
the town’s political allegiance,
says Vilasini, as the BJP doesn’t
have much of a presence in the
state. “In all probability, it just
speaks of the artist’s

imagination,” he says.
Vilasini also stumbled on a
statue which reminded him of
his high school art teacher. “If
Mr Das shaved his head, he’d
look like that,” he says. Another
statue he spotted by a bus
stand resembled C.
Rajagopalachari, or Rajaji,
independent India’s first
governor general and
father-in-law of Gandhi’s son
Devdas. One, in front of a
temple, looked very Tamilian,
complete with sacred ash
smeared on the forehead.
“It (my work) is rather

humorous, and yet makes a
socially relevant statement,” the
artist says. “As I toured towns
and villages looking for Gandhi
statues and busts, I found that
while there were plenty of
them, most of them were
neglected. They got attention
only once or twice a year.”
Vilasini’s work, infused with
humour as well as satire, has
already provoked some Gandhi
loyalists to question whether
the artist indeed visited these
places and photographed
statues that exist, or sculpted
them himself to make a point.

L6

Bapu & us

LOUNGE

SATURDAY, JANUARY 31, 2009 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

IN THE BYLANES
OF PORBANDAR
Bapu & us

Bapu & us

GIGI SCARIA
‘Porbandar 2008’ is a
series of photographs of
Gandhi’s birthplace.
(clockwise from left) A
half-constructed ship at
the Porbandar port; the
main arterial road of
Porbandar; and a
dilapidated lighthouse.
At Saffronart Gallery,
Mumbai, till 15 February

Gandhi is
a silent social
memory in
the town of
his birth

B Y G IGI S CARIA
····························
visited Porbandar for the
first time in the summer of
2008. After an 8-hour road
trip from Ahmedabad, I
reached the sleepy town
around 10pm. With cameras in
hand, I trawled through its
roads, not knowing that
Mahatma Gandhi, its
hero—and its only claim to
fame—was as inconspicuous in
the night as in the day.
I was already working on a
project on Gandhi when art
critic and curator Gayatri Sinha,
who had seen a video film on
Gandhians in New Delhi that I
had done earlier, asked me to
participate in the Saffronart
show. On 1 May, I reached
Gujarat, and over the next six
days, travelled through the state,
documenting every Gandhi
landmark I came across. The
Porbandar photos on display
were taken by a Canon 5D

I

camera on a very bright and
cloudless May afternoon, and
digitally printed on archival
paper in editions of five.
In Porbandar, Gandhi’s
house, Kirti Mandir, is situated
at one end of the town’s arterial
road, near a square where a
clean and well-maintained
marble statue of his stands.
Early in the morning, I saw a
man stop his scooter, climb the
statue and put a fresh garland
around its neck. This, I later
discovered, was a daily
ritual—the only way the people
of Porbandar are trying to keep
Gandhi alive in his birthplace.
Kirti Mandir was rumoured to
have collapsed during the 2001
earthquake, but it wasn’t
significantly damaged. I went in
and climbed the narrow, steep
staircase with the help of a rope
hanging from the ceiling. I
walked around the small rooms,
imagining the person who grew
up in them—a boy without

academic brilliance or any spark
of genius, who went on to
become a hero of the 20th
century. In the afternoon, a few
locals and some visitors from
outside Porbandar walked
through its three floors—looking
at its walls, also perhaps
imagining a hero.
Porbandar’s buildings, its
architecture and broad roads
seem to belong neither to the
present nor to its historical
past—it’s a town lost
somewhere in between. The last
time we heard of this port town
was two months ago, when it
was found that it had been the
first Indian stop for the terrorists
from Karachi (Pakistan) who
attacked Mumbai.
I walked along the long wall
constructed between the sea
and the road which runs along
the entire length of the
Porbandar port, the town’s most
famous landmark. I took a right
turn into a gate and found

myself looking at thousands of
fishing boats.
Poor boatbuilders and petty
businessmen, contaminated
seawaters, polluted air,
half-constructed boats, wrecked
and abandoned boats, flags of
India, heat, wood and
dust—everything intermingled
to create a picture of decadence
and activity. Most ships and
boats in the port are used by
fishermen and locals for their
small businesses. At least that’s
what the locals tell you. The
port has done little to improve
the prospects of the town—it
has been a long time since it
was developed. Most boats on
the shore are made of wood, but
are unpainted.
Around the port area thrives a
large community of
boatbuilders, most of whom are
Muslims. Some boats and
houses along the sea have
inscriptions in Arabic. There’s a
deep divide between the

Muslim and Hindu populations
in this area.
The locals react to the
mention of Gandhi with pride
and amusement. They smile if
you ask for directions to
Gandhi’s house. Other than
that, they don’t really talk about
Gandhi or anything related to
Gandhi. Unlike Sabarmati,
Gandhi’s ashram in
Ahmedabad, which attracts
tourists from all over the world,
his home in Porbandar is a
quiet, inconspicuous structure
maintained by the
Archaeological Survey of India.
Gandhi is just a social
memory in the land of his birth;
there is no room for his own
ideas about change in
Porbandar’s present.
Gigi Scaria is a
New Delhi-based artist.
As told to Sanjukta Sharma
Write to lounge@livemint.com

LOUNGE

gandhi
&us

L7

SATURDAY, JANUARY 31, 2009 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

DRAMA KING
Gandhi & us

Indian playwrights have depicted
BapuGandhi
& us as a saint, a sinner and as
all too human
B Y D EVINA D UTT
····························
s India approached the
50th anniversary of its
independence in 1997, a
few Indian playwrights, notably
from Maharashtra, had begun to
present the compelling figure of
Mahatma Gandhi on the Indian
stage. The preceding years had
seen the rise of the right wing
forces, the rath yatra, the
assassination of a prime minister
and the deregulation of the
Indian economy. The epochal
changes and a general mood of
stocktaking no doubt contributed
to a reassessment of nationhood
and its central ideas.
The depiction of Gandhi in
these early plays was as varied as
the sympathies of the playwrights
and the points of view adopted
by them. Thus Gandhi appeared
as a failed father in Ajit Dalvi’s
Marathi play Gandhi Virudh
Gandhi in 1995. Earlier, in 1989,
the Maharashtra government had
refused permission to stage the
controversial Marathi play Mee
Nathuram Godse Boltoi, written
originally by Pradeep Dalvi in
Gujarati. The play was staged in
1997 and the government banned
it after just six shows. After its
return to the stage in 2002, the
play was a resounding
commercial success across
Maharashtra. Gandhi is seen
through the lens of extreme
rightist thought and shown to be
responsible for Partition.
A more measured tone was
struck by Premanand Gajvi,
whose play Gandhi Ambedkar
attempted to present the
differences the two had, mainly
over the vexed issue of the caste
system. A play of ideas backed by
eight years of careful research, it
met with reasonable critical
success but could run only for a
few months in 1997.
Clearly the passage of time
had liberated a section of Indian
playwrights, allowing them to
explore specific aspects of this
multifaceted personality. These
plays, which depicted Gandhi on
stage as an actual historical
figure, were followed by a wave
of plays which idealized Gandhi.
Perhaps this was inevitable,
more so in the face of the
commercial success of a play
such as Mee Nathuram.
Playwright Ramu Ramanathan
says part of the reason behind
writing the heart-warming play
Mahadevbhai was to correct the
false propaganda about Gandhi
that was being lapped up not
only by adult audiences in
Mumbai but also by the young.
“The entire idea of Gandhi was
being violated in more ways than
one and I felt it was necessary to
remind people about what
Gandhi stood for,” he says.

A

Since 2002, Mahadevbhai,
directed by Ramanathan and
performed by Jaimini Pathak,
has had many shows across the
country. Narrated by Mahadev
Desai, secretary to Gandhi, it is
based on the daily diary that
Desai maintained. The play
offers an intimate look at the
Mahatma and has freedom
fighters appearing in cameos
and asides as ordinary humans,
not superheroes. The play has
been particularly successful
with young students. “Most of
them came backstage and
thanked us for doing this show
since they did not know this
history,” says Pathak.
Sammy, a play on similar lines
written by Pratap Sharma and
directed by Lillette Dubey, makes
use of all that is inspirational in
Gandhi’s life and covers his
political life, from his time in
South Africa till his assassination.
Although plays such as
Mahadevbhai idealize Gandhi
and present only the entirely
defensible aspects of the man,
they do so without distorting
history. This cannot be said of
plays such as Mee Nathuram, a
first-person account by Gandhi’s
killer Nathuram Godse, which
reveals a deep contempt for
non-violence. In order to justify
killing Gandhi, the playwright
has doctored historical facts
pertaining to the time before
and just after Partition. Five
hundred shows later, the success
of the play is a testimony to the
fact that hostility to Gandhi and
his ideals continues, particularly
in Maharashtra.
Audiences have also warmed
to plays which are not
antagonistic to Gandhi, such as
Gandhi Virudh Gandhi, which
shows him as a troubled family
man, partly because these strike
at the idea of the Mahatma
being infallible. Gajvi, who
spent eight years researching
Gandhi Ambedkar, says his task
was compounded by the fact
that every time he read
something new, he would also
come across a contradictory
reference. “I had to be very
careful about the facts because I
felt responsible for the followers
of the two leaders,” he says.
Although Gajvi’s research is
thorough, the play often tilts
towards Ambedkar. Ramdas
Bhatkal, founder of the
publishing company Popular
Prakashan, is working on a
doctoral thesis on Gandhi and
has been researching the subject
for a decade. He says that Gandhi
tends to suffer in contemporary
depictions as “knowing the facts
about Gandhi is one thing and
forming an understanding of him
is another matter. He was
essentially a great unifying force.
PRIMETIME THEATRE COMPANY

Playwright’s muse: A scene from Sammy, written by Pratap Sharma.

SACHIN KARNE
While viewing this
untitled work of acrylic
on mirror, the spectator
becomes a part of it. The
artist invites the viewer
to walk alongside Gandhi
and the two daughter
figures who always
accompanied him.
At Saffronart Gallery,
Mumbai, till 15 February
Besides, a close look at his life
provides more evidence than a
reading of documented facts.”
Perhaps it is significant then
that of late there has been a
resurgence of interest in
Gandhi in theatre circles
outside Maharashtra. Last year,
New Delhi-based director M.K.
Raina presented Stay Yet
Awhile, a play which chronicled
the correspondence between
Gandhi and Tagore. The play
had three actors reading out the
letters, while video and
documentary footage of the
freedom movement was used as
a backdrop.
Raina, who has since begun to
script a play on Gandhi’s special
relationship with children, was
drawn to the humour and grace
that marked the relationship
between Tagore and Gandhi.
“We are all so eager to
hero-worship that we don’t
realize that these two had
serious differences. Besides,
there is not a single issue on
which Gandhi does not speak to
us today. Everything he talked
about has come back to hit us
today,” he says.
Therein lies the enduring idea
of a leader who sought to fuse
idealistic humanism with the
pragmatic and political, even as
he subjected himself to
superhuman trials in the pursuit
of truth. The plays based on his
life have tended to take positions
of intense hostility and deep
admiration, and there is plenty of
unexplored material which could
lend itself to a more critical,
nuanced and thoughtful
representation in theatre.
Write to lounge@livemint.com

L8

Bapu & us

LOUNGE

SATURDAY, JANUARY 31, 2009 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

Bapu & us

Bapu & us

RIYAS KOMU
‘Two Fathers from
Gujarat’ is a mixed media
work in which the artist
superimposed vintage
photographs of Gandhi
and Mohammad Ali
Jinnah on linen and
pasted them on canvas.
He stained the canvas
with tea and used other
materials to achieve the
worn-out look.
At Saffronart Gallery,
Mumbai, till 15 February

YOU CAN
DO IT TOO

On 1 January, the copyright on Gandhi’s books ended and they entered
the public domain. We revisit his autobiography and discover why, in its
ninth decade, it can make us newly reflective and ambitious
B Y C HANDRAHAS C HOUDHURY
····························
alfway through Part II
of his autobiography,
The Story of My
Experiments with Truth, we see
Mohandas Karamchand
Gandhi, still only 24, preparing
to leave South Africa in 1893
after the successful resolution of
the court case that originally
took him there.
Gandhi has, by this time, won
not just the respect but also the
love of the Indian community in
South Africa. His unusually
stringent and holistic approach
towards authority, law and
morals; his keen interest in
matters well outside his brief,
such as racial discrimination,
religious division and sanitation;
and his enthusiasm for
petitioning and pamphleteering,
organizing meetings and
travelling has made him many
friends and admirers. In Natal,
his friends, the merchant
community in particular, pester
him to stay back and set up a
legal practice there. They are
willing not only to send private
legal work his way, but also
organize funds for the “public
work” of reform and
improvement that so
preoccupies him. Gandhi mulls
over their offer, and then
refuses the second part of it:
“My work would be mainly to
make you all work. And how
could I charge you for that?”
My Experiments with Truth
was first published in English
translation in 1927, and in its
ninth decade, it still retains the
capacity, just like its author, to

H

An Autobiography
or The Story of My
Experiments with Truth:
Navajivan
Mudranalaya,
420 pages, Rs100.

make us work should we come
within range of it, to make us
newly reflective, newly
ambitious. It is, as Gandhi
himself writes, not “a real
autobiography” but a spartan,
goal-directed one, closely
focused only on those incidents
and encounters in his life
“which bear upon the practice
of truth”. It reflects its author’s
impatience with inessentials
and his constant search for first
principles; it is rich in lessons
and maxims, in speculations
about root causes and deep
connections, and in an
infectious moral restlessness
and urgency. It can sometimes
be vexing and cranky, as in the
author’s obsession with matters
of diet and sexual self-control,
or his imputation of a divine
will at work in the most
mundane matters. But, as
Gandhi himself writes, “The
useful and the useless must,
like good and evil generally, go
on together, and man must
make his choice.”
The autobiography was
written or dictated in haste,
during the fallow years of the
1920s, when the energy of the
independence struggle had
subsided somewhat but the
demands on Gandhi’s time
remained immense. It was
published piece by piece from
1925 onwards in Gandhi’s
Gujarati weekly Navajivan
(which explains the book’s often
arbitrary division into dozens of
three- and four-page chapters).
Gandhi’s faithful associate,
Mahadev Desai, translated it
almost concurrently into

English, supervised by Gandhi
himself, but the paradox
remains that the autobiography
of one of India’s greatest writers
of English comes to us in an
English translation by another
hand. The copies of it available
in most Indian homes are the
unsophisticated, homely, cheap
editions published by Gandhi’s
own press, the Navajivan Trust,
but they are in keeping with the
spirit of the author, who
honoured substance and
economy over show and style.
Notwithstanding the fact that
most of it is set in England and
South Africa, the autobiography
is the most quintessentially
Indian of books—indeed, it
might be usefully prescribed as
the foundational book for
anyone approaching Indian life
or literature for the first time.
This is in part because of the
range of fundamental Indian
experiences with which it
engages critically—that of
travelling in third-class railway
compartments across the length
and breadth of India, of
agonizing over the filth and
squalor of public and
community spaces, of walking
through temples and observing
religious festivals, of reflecting
on the inequity of power
relations in Indian life all the
way from marriage (beginning
with the author’s own marriage)
to caste and class. But it also
demands to be read because of
Gandhi’s own creative
attitude—the insight offered by
his specific strategies and
responses—as a negotiator
between the forces of tradition

and modernity, as a seeker of a
common ground where
inter-religious dialogue can take
place, as an enthusiast when it
comes to the multiplicity of
Indian languages and systems.
At different points in the book,
we see him trying to learn
Tamil, the better to deal with
indentured labourers from
south India in South Africa;
speaking in Hindi (or
Hindustani) at a viceregal
meeting where the accepted
practice was to speak in English;
and trying to win over a
predominantly Muslim
audience in faltering Urdu.
Gandhi always goes one step
further than one would expect
in dealing with the other; he
always seems to be urging, “You
can do it too.”
Among the aspects of
Gandhi’s nature that emerge
most clearly from the
autobiography are his
considerable talents as
propagandist, pressman and
editor. Gandhi’s Collected
Works run into a hundred
volumes, yet relatively few of
these were conceived as
independent books—they all
made their first appearances in
newspapers and periodicals,
often those run by Gandhi
himself. Although Gandhi
began to read newspapers only
in his teens, very early in his
career he seems to have
become conscious of the
enormous power of the printed
word to disseminate
information, to stoke reflection,
to offer considered criticism,
and to forge durable
relationships without the
necessity of the reader actually
meeting the author.
But—and this is characteristic
of him—he also saw in the
written word a means of
pinning himself to the highest
standards of fairness and justice
(which are only other words for
what he would have understood
as “truth”). Writing about the
journal Indian Opinion, which
he ran for over a decade in
South Africa, he recalls, “Week
after week I poured out my soul
in its columns... The journal
became for me a training in
self-restraint... The critic found
very little to which he could
object. In fact, the tone of
Indian Opinion compelled the
critic to put a curb on his own
pen.” Here, as at many other
points in the book, we see
Gandhi advance a sophisticated
understanding of the dialectical
relationship between one’s own

actions and those of others,
such as when he says, “My
experience has shown that we
win justice quickest by
rendering justice to the other
party.” Gandhi often asks the
impossible of us but—as the
2006 film Lage Raho Munnabhai
reasserted, albeit in a highly
contrived manner—his appeal is
in the radical possibilities he
opens up before us; he expands
our moral playing field. After
reading Gandhi, we come away
with an enhanced view of our
connections to the world.
Under Indian law, the
copyright of an author over his
works expires 60 years after his
death. Thus, on 1 January, all of
Gandhi’s works entered the
public domain, and anybody
can now compile and publish
them in whatever form they
think fit. Although this would
probably deal a blow to the
revenues of the Navajivan Trust
(as of January, a total of
1,489,000 copies of the English
edition had been sold), one feels
that Gandhi, with his ideal of
aparigraha or non-possession,
and his evident pleasure at
holding a mass readership,
would actually have been quite
pleased to be released from the
bounds of copyright and to
become— notionally at least—a
free resource like air or water.
Gandhi interpreted the word
“religion” not just as a belief in
god, rituals, beliefs and
doctrine, but “in its broadest
sense, meaning thereby
self-realization or knowledge of
self”. Looking at his own book
similarly in the broadest
possible perspective, we can
locate it in a venerable
tradition of ambitious human
seeking and questioning.
Nearly 2,500 years ago, the
Greek philosopher Socrates
was sentenced to death in
Athens for impiety and for
corrupting the youth with
unsound ideas. The main line
of Socrates’ defence in
court—“The unexamined life is
not worth living”—has rung
across the centuries as an ideal
of human life.
My Experiments with Truth
might be seen not just as the
central book in modern Indian
literature, but among the most
Socratic books in world literature,
with its insistent questioning of
both self and world and its
rousing call for us to listen “to
the higher law of our being, the
voice of conscience”.
Write to lounge@livemint.com

LOUNGE

L9

gandhi
&us

SATURDAY, JANUARY 31, 2009 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

SPINNING A
NEW YARN
Gandhi & us

LAKME FASHION WEEK

Bapu & us

From a weaver’s village in West Bengal
to the fashion runway in Mumbai, a designer
takes khadi on a new journey
PHOTOGRAPHS

BY I NDRANIL

BHOUMIK/MINT

B Y A VEEK D ATTA
aveek.d@livemint.com

····························
he 5-hour car ride from
Kolkata to Chowk village
in West Bengal’s
Murshidabad district on a
bumpy, broken road is sure to
leave you with a sore back. This
journey is probably why the
region has escaped the
attention of potential handloom
buyers, who flock to more
accessible hubs in the state.
But 29-year-old
Kolkata-based designer
Soumitra Mondal is willing to
make the trip once every two
months to nurture his
camaraderie with the local
weavers and reassure them that
their craft is still valued.
Silk weaving is the main
cottage industry in
Murshidabad. Around 16,000
families in Chowk, in the
Islampur area, and 30
neighbouring villages are
engaged at various points of
the process of silk
production—from separating
silk threads from cocoons and
spinning the yarn to weaving
them into cloth. Walk down the
dusty roads of Chowk and the
air hums with the rattle of the
taant (the indigenous wooden
loom on which the cloth is
woven). The brick-and-mortar
houses indicate that the
village is relatively more
prosperous than other parts of
the poor district.
The looms date back to the
1950s, when the craft took root
in the area, and have been
handed down from one
generation to the next.
There has been little impetus
from the government to
modernize the fabric and make
it popular among the general
public. But now, hope has come
in the form of Indian fashion
designers who are willing to
experiment. Designers such as
Ritu Kumar, Rohit Bal,
Raghavendra Rathore and
Anamika Khanna have used
khadi in their creations, and
newer labels such as Gaba are
now doing so.
Mondal is currently working
on a line of autumn/winter
clothes for daily wear for his
fashion label, Marg. He says this
collection—in earthy tones of
brown, yellow ochre, green and
maroon—will be crafted with
just cotton and silk handloom
and khadi, and adorned with
thread embroidery.
“Khadi can be given a soft
texture that breathes well, and
with the infusion of vibrant
colours and modern designs, it
can be very chic,” Mondal says.
We visited Chowk with the
designer, who was there to take
delivery of a consignment of
bleached white “linen silk”, an
innovative combination of
handmade silk and linen yarn
that he has conceptualized.
Having extensively researched
khadi (he began experimenting
with the fabric in 1999, while he
was interning with designer
Rahul Gupta), Mondal has been
working with the artisans of the

T

Khadi’s bright hues:
Models showing
Mondal’s
Spring/Summer 2009
collection at Lakme
Fashion Week; the
outfits are now
available at fashion
stores in Mumbai.
Wheel of life: (top) Weavers in Islampur; and Mondal at Chandrakant
Lalitmohan Resham Khadi Samity, from where he sources fabric.
Islampur area to procure fabric
for his collections. His linen silk
dresses were well-received at
Lakme Fashion Week in
Spring/Summer 2008.
That was the first time
Mondal presented a collection
using khadi silk. He went a step
further with his Spring/Summer
2009 collection (currently
selling at Aza and The Oak Tree
in Mumbai; prices start at
Rs1,200), which was crafted
entirely from khadi silk and
included a few linen silk
garments. The collection
received an overwhelming
response at Lakme Fashion
Week in October. The look and

feel of the lightweight and
translucent linen silk was a hit.
“This kind of innovation is
required not only to popularize
khadi, but also to make sure
that the artisans are given new
challenges to make the job
more exciting. The only way an
art or a profession can survive
is when there is a demand for
it,” he says. “If I am successful
in popularizing khadi as a niche
material in India and abroad, I
could support a hundred
families in this area involved in
the production of khadi.”
There is a long way to go.
With khadi generally relegated
to being a dull and coarse fabric

without mass appeal, the
fortunes of around one
million artisans involved in
the production of khadi across
India have been dwindling.
Though much of Mondal’s
production work is done in
Phulia (the more famous
handloom hub in the state),
he delegates a substantial
portion of it to Islampur
since it is the only area in
the state, according to him,
where the entire process
takes place—from the
cultivation of silkworms
to the separation of
the thread and the
weaving of the cloth.

Moreover, since
Phulia is only a
2-hour drive from
Kolkata, the
artisans there have
more than enough
work and are,
therefore, often
hard-pressed to
deliver
consignments on
time, says Mondal.
“Since Islampur is
far less accessible
and further away
from Kolkata, it has not
yet been explored by
potential buyers. So the
commitment and

excitement among the weavers
of this area is far greater.”
Procuring the material directly
from weavers also gives him a
cost advantage.
Mondal is planning to give
linen silk a popular platform
by incorporating it in designs
meant for apparel stores such
as the Linen Club, promoted
by the Aditya Birla Group. He
has also been in talks with
Fabindia, which is interested
in exploring the idea of
stocking dresses made of khadi
silk with traditional ikkat work.
If the deal is clinched, it would
mean more work for the
artisans of Chowk.

L10

Bapu & us

Bapu & us

LOUNGE

SATURDAY, JANUARY 31, 2009 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

LOUNGE

WHY GANDHI
STILL MATTERS

Gandhi & us

Gandhi & us

Bapu & us

Bapu & us

S

They were blamed, probably
accurately, for a recent attempt
on the life of chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee.
The rise of the Maoists in the
1980s and beyond owes much to
the work of a former schoolteacher named Kondapalli
Seetaramaiah. He was the head
of the Peoples War Group
which, especially in Andhra
Pradesh, mounted a series of
daring attacks on railway stations and police camps. The
police finally arrested KS (as he
was known); but then he feigned
illness and was admitted to hospital, from where he escaped.
It took the police two years to
recapture Seetaramaiah. A
journalist later asked him what
he had done when on the run.
KS replied that he went from
the hospital in Hyderabad to
Gandhi’s birthplace in Gujarat,
some 900 miles (about 1448km)
away. Here the revolutionary
got off the train and took a rickshaw to the Mahatma’s parental home, now a museum dedicated to his memory. “I went
there and spat on the maggu,”
KS told the reporter, maggu
being the Telugu word for the
painted decorations placed
outside most Indian shrines.
Thus did this Maoist show his
contempt for a man acknowledged to be the Father of the
Indian Nation.
Extremists despise Gandhi—
what, however, of the vital centre? For much of the time that
India has been an independent
nation, the government in New
Delhi has been run by the Congress party, to which Gandhi
himself belonged. On the day of
independence, 15 August 1947,
the Mahatma was striving for
communal peace in Kolkata.
When the new ministers of the
Bengal government went to seek
his blessings, Gandhi told them
that they had been tested during
the British regime: “But in a way
it has been no test at all. But
now there will be no end to your
being tested. Do not fall a prey
to the lure of wealth. May God
help you! You are there to serve
the villages and the poor.”
To say that Indian politicians
have since dishonoured
Gandhi’s advice would be a
colossal understatement. The
first betrayal, perhaps, was the
abandonment of the villages
and the poor. Through the 1950s
and the 1960s, the economic
policy of the state focused on
the urban-industrial sector.
Agriculture and crafts were
neglected; so, even more grievously, was primary education.
There still remained something “Gandhian” about the men
in power; they were, on the
whole, not personally corrupt.
However, from the 1970s, politi-

SATURDAY, JANUARY 31, 2009 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

Bapu & us

Bapu & us

B Y R AMACHANDRA G UHA
····························
ince independence and
Partition, no event has so
divided the Indian people
as the demolition of a mosque in
the northern town of Ayodhya in
December 1992. Hindu radicals
claimed that the mosque, known
as the Babri Masjid, was built on
the ruins of a temple, and that
the site itself was the birthplace
of god Ram. Through the late
1980s and early 1990s, bands of
volunteers tried to storm the
mosque, in the process provoking a series of bloody riots across
northern India.
Shortly before the Babri Masjid was destroyed, a group of
Gandhians visited Ayodhya.
They were led by a woman
named Sushila Nayar, an
80-year-old physician who had
worked closely with Mahatma
Gandhi. A prayer meeting conducted by Nayar ended in the
singing of Raghupati Raghava
Raja Ram, a favourite hymn of
the Mahatma. When they came
to the line Ishwar Allah Tero
Naam (God is named both Ishwar and Allah), the meeting was
disrupted by shouts and slogans. A section of the crowd
surged towards the stage. Nayar
came down to explain to the
protesters that the singers had
come “on behalf” of Gandhi
(“hum Gandhiji ki taraf se aye
hain”). “Aur hum Godse ki taraf
se,” the disruptionists are said to
have replied: we have come on
behalf of (Gandhi’s assassin)
Nathuram Godse, and like him,
we think you Gandhians are too
soft on the Muslims.
In contemporary India, it is
not just the Hindu right that
detests Gandhi. So does the
Maoist left, which has recently
been described by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as the
“greatest internal security
threat” facing the nation. As
readers of this newspaper know,
the Indian Maoists are known as
Naxalites, after a village in north
Bengal where their movement
began in 1967. Two years after
the birth of naxalism, the world
celebrated the centenary of
Gandhi’s birth. Through that
year, 1969, the Naxalites
brought down statues of the
Mahatma in towns and villages
across West Bengal. Occasionally, by way of variation, they
entered a government office to
vandalize his portrait.
The Maoists were vanquished
in the 1970s by a combination of
police action and killings by
cadres of rival Communist
groupings. But they later
revived, and are especially powerful now in the states of central
and eastern India. Now they
have once more made their
presence felt in West Bengal.

L11

gandhi
&us

gandhi
&us

cians began abusing their position to enrich themselves and
their families. A global survey
carried out by Gallup in 2004
found that the lack of confidence
in politicians was highest in
India. As many as 91% of those
polled felt that their elected representatives were not honest.
What remains of Gandhi and
Gandhism in India today?
Before answering this question,
let me note that like the Buddha, Gandhi was born in the
Indian subcontinent but does
not belong to this land alone.
Just as the Buddha found his
most devoted adherents elsewhere, the legacy of Gandhi has
been admirably taken over by
Martin Luther King, Archbishop
Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama
and Aung San Suu Kyi. It is a
matter of shame that Gandhi
was never awarded the Nobel
Peace Prize; the shame is also
felt by those who decide on the
prize in Oslo, who have since
made amends by awarding it to
the four “Gandhians” mentioned above.
Within India, meanwhile, a
Gandhian tradition exists outside politics. There is a vigorous
environmental movement,
which has campaigned against
the excesses of industrial development and worked to promote
renewable energy and smallscale irrigation systems. These
Greens often begin or end their
programmes on 2 October,
Gandhi’s birthday. The Gandhian influence is also present
in the feminist and human
rights movements, where it coexists with tendencies drawing
inspiration from other, more
conventionally left-wing political traditions. Doctors and
teachers inspired by Gandhi
leave their city homes to run
clinics and schools in the countryside. And at least a handful of
India’s many millionaires are
influenced by Gandhi. Where
the majority hoard their wealth
or spend it on jewellery and foreign holidays, there are some
titans who have given away vast
amounts of money to promote
primary education and transparency in governance.
What should remain of
Gandhi and Gandhism in the
world today? Sixty-one years
after his death, some of his
teachings are plainly irrelevant.
For example, his ideas on food
(his diet consisted chiefly of
nuts and fruits and boiled vegetables) and sex (he imposed a
strict celibacy on his followers)
can hardly find favour with the
majority of humans. That said,
there are at least four areas in
which Gandhi’s ideas remain of
interest and importance.
The first is the environment.
The economic rise of China

Why 61 years after his death, both
left- and right-wing extremists feel
the need to vilify him. Why answers
to the world’s most pressing crises
lie in his teachings

RAM RAHMAN
This photograph was
taken by Rahman in 2002,
during an India Day
parade in New York. A
man dressed as Gandhi
walks down Madison
Avenue as others follow
him, holding the tricolour
in their hands.
At Saffronart Gallery,
Mumbai, till 15 February
and India has brought a long
suppressed, and quintessentially Gandhian, question to the
fore: How much should a person consume? So long as the
West had a monopoly on modern lifestyles, the question simply did not arise. But if most
Chinese and most Indians
come, like most Americans and
most Englishmen, to own and
drive a car, this will place
unbearable burdens on the

earth. Back in 1928, Gandhi
had warned about the unsustainability, on the global scale,
of Western patterns of production and consumption. “God
forbid that India should ever
take to industrialization after
the manner of the West,” he
said. “The economic imperialism of a single tiny island kingdom (England) is today keeping the world in chains. If an
entire nation of 300 million

At least a handful of India’s many millionaires are influenced by Gandhi. Where the majority hoard their
wealth or spend it on jewellery and foreign holidays, there are some titans who have given away vast
amounts of money to promote primary education and transparency in governance

took to similar economic
exploitation, it would strip the
world bare like locusts.”
The second area is faith.
Gandhi was at odds both with
secularists who confidently
looked forward to God’s funeral,
and with monotheists who
insisted that theirs was the one
and true God. Gandhi believed
that no religion had a monopoly
on the truth. He argued that one
should accept the faith into
which one was born (hence his
opposition to conversion), but
seek always to interpret it in the
most broad-minded and non-violent way. And he actively
encouraged friendships across
religions. His own best friend
was a Christian priest, C.F. And-

rews. In his ashram he held a
daily prayer meeting at which
texts from different religions
were read or sung. At the time,
his position appeared eccentric;
in retrospect, it seems to be precocious. In a world driven by
religious misunderstanding, it
can help cultivate mutual
respect and recognition.
The third (and perhaps most
obvious) area is non-violent
resistance. That social change is
both less harmful and more sustainable when achieved by nonviolent means is now widely
recognized. A study of some 60
transitions to democratic rule
since World War II, by the think
tank Freedom House, found that
“far more often than is generally

understood, the change agent is
broad-based, non-violent civic
resistance—which employs tactics such as boycotts, mass protests, blockades, strikes and civil
disobedience to de-legitimate
authoritarian rulers and erode
their sources of support, including the loyalty of their armed
defenders.” These, of course,
were all methods of protest pioneered by Gandhi.
The fourth area is public life.
In his Reflections on Gandhi,
George Orwell wrote that
“regarded simply as a politician,
and compared with the other
leading political figures of our
time, how clean a smell he has
managed to leave behind!” In an
age of terror, politicians may not

be able to live as open a life as
Gandhi. There were no securitymen posted outside his ashram;
visitors of any creed and nationality would walk in when they
chose. Still, the politicians (and
activists) of today might at least
emulate his lack of dissembling
and his utter lack of reliance on
“spin”. His campaigns of civil
disobedience were always
announced in advance. His
social experiments were
minutely dissected in the pages
of his newspapers, the comments of his critics placed
alongside his own.
Gandhi was a Hindu; but his
Hinduism was altogether less
dogmatic than that of the fundamentalists of today. Gandhi

fought against injustice; but
without recourse to the gun and
without demonizing his adversary. That, six decades after his
death, the extremists of left and
right still need to vilify him is in
itself a considerable tribute to
the relevance of his thought. So,
in a somewhat different way, is
the need for mainstream politicians to garland portraits of
Gandhi even as their practice is
at odds with the man they profess to honour.
Gandhi was a prophet of
sorts, but by no means a joyless
one. On a visit to London in
1931 he met a British monarch
for the first and last time. When
he came out of Buckingham Palace after speaking with George

They were blamed, probably
accurately, for a recent attempt
on the life of chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee.
The rise of the Maoists in the
1980s and beyond owes much to
the work of a former schoolteacher named Kondapalli
Seetaramaiah. He was the head
of the Peoples War Group
which, especially in Andhra
Pradesh, mounted a series of
daring attacks on railway stations and police camps. The
police finally arrested KS (as he
was known); but then he feigned
illness and was admitted to hospital, from where he escaped.
It took the police two years to
recapture Seetaramaiah. A
journalist later asked him what
he had done when on the run.
KS replied that he went from
the hospital in Hyderabad to
Gandhi’s birthplace in Gujarat,
some 900 miles (about 1448km)
away. Here the revolutionary
got off the train and took a rickshaw to the Mahatma’s parental home, now a museum dedicated to his memory. “I went
there and spat on the maggu,”
KS told the reporter, maggu
being the Telugu word for the
painted decorations placed
outside most Indian shrines.
Thus did this Maoist show his
contempt for a man acknowledged to be the Father of the
Indian Nation.
Extremists despise Gandhi—
what, however, of the vital centre? For much of the time that
India has been an independent
nation, the government in New
Delhi has been run by the Congress party, to which Gandhi
himself belonged. On the day of
independence, 15 August 1947,
the Mahatma was striving for
communal peace in Kolkata.
When the new ministers of the
Bengal government went to seek
his blessings, Gandhi told them
that they had been tested during
the British regime: “But in a way
it has been no test at all. But
now there will be no end to your
being tested. Do not fall a prey
to the lure of wealth. May God
help you! You are there to serve
the villages and the poor.”
To say that Indian politicians
have since dishonoured
Gandhi’s advice would be a
colossal understatement. The
first betrayal, perhaps, was the
abandonment of the villages
and the poor. Through the 1950s
and the 1960s, the economic
policy of the state focused on
the urban-industrial sector.
Agriculture and crafts were
neglected; so, even more grievously, was primary education.
There still remained something “Gandhian” about the men
in power; they were, on the
whole, not personally corrupt.
However, from the 1970s, politi-

SATURDAY, JANUARY 31, 2009 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

Bapu & us

Bapu & us

B Y R AMACHANDRA G UHA
····························
ince independence and
Partition, no event has so
divided the Indian people
as the demolition of a mosque in
the northern town of Ayodhya in
December 1992. Hindu radicals
claimed that the mosque, known
as the Babri Masjid, was built on
the ruins of a temple, and that
the site itself was the birthplace
of god Ram. Through the late
1980s and early 1990s, bands of
volunteers tried to storm the
mosque, in the process provoking a series of bloody riots across
northern India.
Shortly before the Babri Masjid was destroyed, a group of
Gandhians visited Ayodhya.
They were led by a woman
named Sushila Nayar, an
80-year-old physician who had
worked closely with Mahatma
Gandhi. A prayer meeting conducted by Nayar ended in the
singing of Raghupati Raghava
Raja Ram, a favourite hymn of
the Mahatma. When they came
to the line Ishwar Allah Tero
Naam (God is named both Ishwar and Allah), the meeting was
disrupted by shouts and slogans. A section of the crowd
surged towards the stage. Nayar
came down to explain to the
protesters that the singers had
come “on behalf” of Gandhi
(“hum Gandhiji ki taraf se aye
hain”). “Aur hum Godse ki taraf
se,” the disruptionists are said to
have replied: we have come on
behalf of (Gandhi’s assassin)
Nathuram Godse, and like him,
we think you Gandhians are too
soft on the Muslims.
In contemporary India, it is
not just the Hindu right that
detests Gandhi. So does the
Maoist left, which has recently
been described by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as the
“greatest internal security
threat” facing the nation. As
readers of this newspaper know,
the Indian Maoists are known as
Naxalites, after a village in north
Bengal where their movement
began in 1967. Two years after
the birth of naxalism, the world
celebrated the centenary of
Gandhi’s birth. Through that
year, 1969, the Naxalites
brought down statues of the
Mahatma in towns and villages
across West Bengal. Occasionally, by way of variation, they
entered a government office to
vandalize his portrait.
The Maoists were vanquished
in the 1970s by a combination of
police action and killings by
cadres of rival Communist
groupings. But they later
revived, and are especially powerful now in the states of central
and eastern India. Now they
have once more made their
presence felt in West Bengal.

L11

gandhi
&us

gandhi
&us

cians began abusing their position to enrich themselves and
their families. A global survey
carried out by Gallup in 2004
found that the lack of confidence
in politicians was highest in
India. As many as 91% of those
polled felt that their elected representatives were not honest.
What remains of Gandhi and
Gandhism in India today?
Before answering this question,
let me note that like the Buddha, Gandhi was born in the
Indian subcontinent but does
not belong to this land alone.
Just as the Buddha found his
most devoted adherents elsewhere, the legacy of Gandhi has
been admirably taken over by
Martin Luther King, Archbishop
Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama
and Aung San Suu Kyi. It is a
matter of shame that Gandhi
was never awarded the Nobel
Peace Prize; the shame is also
felt by those who decide on the
prize in Oslo, who have since
made amends by awarding it to
the four “Gandhians” mentioned above.
Within India, meanwhile, a
Gandhian tradition exists outside politics. There is a vigorous
environmental movement,
which has campaigned against
the excesses of industrial development and worked to promote
renewable energy and smallscale irrigation systems. These
Greens often begin or end their
programmes on 2 October,
Gandhi’s birthday. The Gandhian influence is also present
in the feminist and human
rights movements, where it coexists with tendencies drawing
inspiration from other, more
conventionally left-wing political traditions. Doctors and
teachers inspired by Gandhi
leave their city homes to run
clinics and schools in the countryside. And at least a handful of
India’s many millionaires are
influenced by Gandhi. Where
the majority hoard their wealth
or spend it on jewellery and foreign holidays, there are some
titans who have given away vast
amounts of money to promote
primary education and transparency in governance.
What should remain of
Gandhi and Gandhism in the
world today? Sixty-one years
after his death, some of his
teachings are plainly irrelevant.
For example, his ideas on food
(his diet consisted chiefly of
nuts and fruits and boiled vegetables) and sex (he imposed a
strict celibacy on his followers)
can hardly find favour with the
majority of humans. That said,
there are at least four areas in
which Gandhi’s ideas remain of
interest and importance.
The first is the environment.
The economic rise of China

Why 61 years after his death, both
left- and right-wing extremists feel
the need to vilify him. Why answers
to the world’s most pressing crises
lie in his teachings

RAM RAHMAN
This photograph was
taken by Rahman in 2002,
during an India Day
parade in New York. A
man dressed as Gandhi
walks down Madison
Avenue as others follow
him, holding the tricolour
in their hands.
At Saffronart Gallery,
Mumbai, till 15 February
and India has brought a long
suppressed, and quintessentially Gandhian, question to the
fore: How much should a person consume? So long as the
West had a monopoly on modern lifestyles, the question simply did not arise. But if most
Chinese and most Indians
come, like most Americans and
most Englishmen, to own and
drive a car, this will place
unbearable burdens on the

earth. Back in 1928, Gandhi
had warned about the unsustainability, on the global scale,
of Western patterns of production and consumption. “God
forbid that India should ever
take to industrialization after
the manner of the West,” he
said. “The economic imperialism of a single tiny island kingdom (England) is today keeping the world in chains. If an
entire nation of 300 million

At least a handful of India’s many millionaires are influenced by Gandhi. Where the majority hoard their
wealth or spend it on jewellery and foreign holidays, there are some titans who have given away vast
amounts of money to promote primary education and transparency in governance

took to similar economic
exploitation, it would strip the
world bare like locusts.”
The second area is faith.
Gandhi was at odds both with
secularists who confidently
looked forward to God’s funeral,
and with monotheists who
insisted that theirs was the one
and true God. Gandhi believed
that no religion had a monopoly
on the truth. He argued that one
should accept the faith into
which one was born (hence his
opposition to conversion), but
seek always to interpret it in the
most broad-minded and non-violent way. And he actively
encouraged friendships across
religions. His own best friend
was a Christian priest, C.F. And-

rews. In his ashram he held a
daily prayer meeting at which
texts from different religions
were read or sung. At the time,
his position appeared eccentric;
in retrospect, it seems to be precocious. In a world driven by
religious misunderstanding, it
can help cultivate mutual
respect and recognition.
The third (and perhaps most
obvious) area is non-violent
resistance. That social change is
both less harmful and more sustainable when achieved by nonviolent means is now widely
recognized. A study of some 60
transitions to democratic rule
since World War II, by the think
tank Freedom House, found that
“far more often than is generally

understood, the change agent is
broad-based, non-violent civic
resistance—which employs tactics such as boycotts, mass protests, blockades, strikes and civil
disobedience to de-legitimate
authoritarian rulers and erode
their sources of support, including the loyalty of their armed
defenders.” These, of course,
were all methods of protest pioneered by Gandhi.
The fourth area is public life.
In his Reflections on Gandhi,
George Orwell wrote that
“regarded simply as a politician,
and compared with the other
leading political figures of our
time, how clean a smell he has
managed to leave behind!” In an
age of terror, politicians may not

be able to live as open a life as
Gandhi. There were no securitymen posted outside his ashram;
visitors of any creed and nationality would walk in when they
chose. Still, the politicians (and
activists) of today might at least
emulate his lack of dissembling
and his utter lack of reliance on
“spin”. His campaigns of civil
disobedience were always
announced in advance. His
social experiments were
minutely dissected in the pages
of his newspapers, the comments of his critics placed
alongside his own.
Gandhi was a Hindu; but his
Hinduism was altogether less
dogmatic than that of the fundamentalists of today. Gandhi

fought against injustice; but
without recourse to the gun and
without demonizing his adversary. That, six decades after his
death, the extremists of left and
right still need to vilify him is in
itself a considerable tribute to
the relevance of his thought. So,
in a somewhat different way, is
the need for mainstream politicians to garland portraits of
Gandhi even as their practice is
at odds with the man they profess to honour.
Gandhi was a prophet of
sorts, but by no means a joyless
one. On a visit to London in
1931 he met a British monarch
for the first and last time. When
he came out of Buckingham Palace after speaking with George

How the
floundering
discipline of
Gandhian
studies might
be set for a
long overdue
revival
B Y K RISH R AGHAV &
S IDIN V ADUKUT
····························
xactly 50 years ago, a
remarkably detailed,
extraordinary blueprint
was drawn for The Gandhi
Institute—a university that
would “extend and fulfil”
Mohandas Karamchand
Gandhi’s thoughts and
philosophy. It named Albert
Einstein, Karl Jung, Aurobindo
Ghosh and Jean-Paul Sartre as
“patrons”. Envisioned as a
global hub for Gandhian
studies and education, its
elaborate plans included 17
departments, 10 institutions
abroad and “an imposing
building in Delhi” to house
the institute.
It was an ambitious plan.
And one that remained
entirely on paper. That
failure was perhaps a sign of
things to come. The last 50
years have seen a range of
half-baked, oft-delayed and
poorly implemented plans
that have not only obscured
the Mahatma’s thoughts but,
in some cases, effectively
buried them. Gandhian studies
now exists as a fringe
discipline— under-funded,
poorly managed and all but
forgotten. “I’m sorry to say that
all we have are signboards with
titles—nothing has taken off,”
says Savita Singh, director of
the International Centre for
Gandhian Studies and Research
at Rajghat, New Delhi.
“Things are not in a good
shape. The financial situation
of a lot of Gandhian
institutions, especially
educational, is not very rosy,”
says Razi Ahmed, secretary of
the Gandhi Sangrahalaya in
Patna. According to Ahmed,
while the government has
provisions to help such
institutions, most functionaries
rise to symbolic action only
“during centenaries and
anniversaries”.
It was in that vein in 1969,
on Gandhi’s birth centenary,
that the government
announced a set of ambitious
plans to set up 69 Gandhi
Bhavans in universities and a
National Service Scheme, a
student volunteer corps
focusing on community
service. History repeated itself.
“Most of these plans are in
disarray as they were not wellcoordinated,” says Singh. At
around the same time, a large,
elaborate exhibition complex
came up along the Rajghat
memorial; it was called the
Gandhi Darshan International
Exhibition Complex. In a by
now all-too-familiar pattern,
the exhibition, after a
six-month run, was forgotten
and largely abandoned.
An early plan to convert the
site into an international
centre for Gandhian studies
resurfaced 25 years later in
1994, when then prime

Bapu & us

E

VASUDHA THOZHUR
An untitled work of
mixed media on canvas,
Thozhur’s work evokes
the monkey, common
on the rooftops of
Gujarat. Playing into
the image of the three
monkeys, the work
suggests that in the
land of Gandhi’s birth,
the doctrine of ‘ahimsa’
has been violated.
At Saffronart Gallery,
Mumbai, till 15 February
minister Narasimha Rao
christened it the International
Centre for Gandhian Studies
and Research.
Since then, the centre—
spread over 36 acres, with
numerous classrooms, lecture
halls and auditoriums already
constructed and waiting—has
been lobbying for deemed
university status. Currently
it conducts short, vocational
courses in spinning,
tailoring and pottery for
schoolchildren (about 400
have applied in the last five
years), and is a recognized
centre of the National
Institute of Open Schooling.
Elsewhere, as part of the
Ninth Plan from 1997 to 2002,
the University Grants
Commission (UGC) announced
the “Epochmaking Social
Thinkers” scheme, which
granted financial support to
universities starting Gandhian
study centres. As of August
2008, 61 universities had
signed up and obtained funds.
While Singh is of the opinion
that few of these centres
function with any success,
Jeevan Kumar, director of the
Centre for Gandhian Studies at
Bangalore University,
disagrees: “From my
experience, a number of these
centres are doing significant
work, and we must remember
that most of these are started
with UGC support... So when

the UGC withdraws this
support in, say, five years, the
lack of adequate finances on
the university’s side means
that activities get curtailed.”
Other universities have
found that a little modification
of the syllabus helps increase
the number of takers. The
Panjab University’s department
of Gandhian studies, for
example, has seen a flood of
applications for its master’s
programme in Gandhian and

peace studies. So much so that
the university recently
increased the number of seats
from 20 to 25. The change?
“We’ve restructured the course
to be more oriented towards
people taking competitive
examinations,” says Jai Narain
Sharma, professor, chairman
and honorary director of the
department. “We’re proud to
say that nine students from
our current batch have made it
to the final stages of the civil
HARIKRISHNA KATRAGADDA/MINT

Last bastion: Savita Singh hopes the International Centre for
Gandhian Studies and Research in New Delhi will finally get its due.

services examinations, while
two others have sat for the
judicial services.”
Sharma says Gandhian
studies are still relevant and
contemporary, but students are
mostly looking for something
“job-oriented”, a need few
Gandhi courses seem to cater
to. Kumar, however, says he’s
“not convinced” this particular
approach would work: “I’m not
sure we can adjust a course on
Gandhi to be more careeroriented. I would look at it
more as a philosophy or a set
of principles one inculcates in
whatever career you find
yourself in.”
Outside India, however, the
outlook appears more
optimistic. Sushil Mittal, a
professor of Hinduism at the
James Madison University in
Virginia, US, sees a growing
interest in the ideals of
Gandhi. “Recent years,
especially after 11 September
2001, have witnessed a
considerable worldwide
growth, and in particular in
the US, in Gandhian
thought,” said Mittal in an
email interview.
Mittal is founder-director of
the Mahatma Gandhi Center
for Global Nonviolence at the
university. According to Mittal,
the centre is helping to put
together the considerable
amount of Gandhi-related
work going on in American
institutions. Starting this year,
the best of this research may
be found in the International
Journal of Gandhi Studies, the
flagship annual publication of
Mittal’s centre.
Mittal hopes that the journal
will help revive neglected areas
of Gandhian studies and find
relevant, modern
interpretations. In April, the
centre will host an
international conference on
non-violence with the theme
“Rethinking Gandhi and
Global Nonviolence”.
As far as Mittal is concerned,
Gandhian studies are getting a
new lease of life abroad. He

says several teacher-scholars
are doing cutting-edge work
and contrasts this with the
largely symbolic efforts in
India. And while most students
are non-Indian—Mittal says
that only around 1% of the
1,500 students he has taught
are Indian—he believes that
the discipline has come of age.
Contemporary global events
have provided a new reason to
go back to the Mahatma’s
teachings. Referring to 9/11,
Mittal observes, “It took the
worst act of terror in Western
history to make the world, and
in particular the scholars,
remember and learn from
the life and achievements of
the Mahatma!”
In India too, after years of
start-and-stop initiatives, we
could now see a resurgence in
the discipline. “We feel that
now, when the government is
mulling plans for a World
University at Nalanda, we can
push for a plan that is equally
relevant: setting up a central
university of Gandhian thought
here in Delhi,” says Singh.
She, along with other
signatories, has drafted a letter
outlining plans to Arjun Singh,
the Union minister for human
resource and development.
The Rajghat campus is ready
with a “full-fledged” plan,
Singh says, including course
curricula up to the PhD level.
All it needs now is the
government’s go-ahead.
While films and art
exhibitions continue to
perpetuate the icon that was
Gandhi, the essence of the
Mahatma, his beliefs,
convictions and philosophy,
struggle to find people
willing to study or teach
them. Singh says, “Gandhi
himself didn’t want to be
remembered or idolized; he
wanted people to build a
world that would make him
irrelevant.” That has probably
happened. But not in the way
the Mahatma intended.
krish.r@livemint.com

www.livemint.com

SATURDAY, JANUARY 31, 2009

L13

Style

LOUNGE
BIG IMPRESSION

The First Lady’s message
KEVIN LAMARQUE/REUTERS

Immigrant designers embody the quest for
the American dream, echoing President
Barack Obama’s speeches

JASON REED/REUTERS

B Y C HERYL L U-L IEN T AN
····························
he colour, fit and style of
Michelle Obama’s inauguration-day dresses have
already been minutely dissected,
from the pale lemon grass hue
and sparkly details of her daytime outfit to the feminine, even
demure silk chiffon and crystals
of her ball gown.
Yet what was most interesting about her style choices for
her first day as First Lady was
not the ensembles themselves
but the message she telegraphed through the designers
she picked.
Her day dress and matching
jacket were created by Isabel
Toledo, a designer who is
admired for her artistic touches,
which often include eye-catching architectural shapes and
geometric patterns. Toledo, who
has run her small business
largely on the fringes of mainstream fashion over the past 25
years, was born in Cuba but left
as a girl when her family fled to
the US in search of a better life.
Michelle Obama went off the
beaten path of well-known
designers again when choosing
her evening gown. The dress she
wore was made by Jason Wu, a
26-year-old Taipei-born designer
who lived in Vancouver and Paris
before interning in New York for
Narciso Rodriguez (whose work
she wore for other inauguration
festivities) and then launched his
own line in 2006.
The designers embodied multiculturalism, the universal immigrant’s success story and the
quest for the American
dream—and their frocks, as a
result, were much more than just
pieces of silk and crystals stitched
together. They provided a powerful visual symbol of the struggles
and triumphs that Barack Obama
has spoken of in his sweeping
speeches about this country.
“Every designer that Michelle
has worn and supported in the
past 48 hours has a very American story to tell,” says Mary
Alice Stephenson, a stylist and
fashion expert. “It’s just like the
Obama slogan about
change—these are the rising
stars in fashion, and Michelle
gave them a little push to be the
artists that they are going to be.”
Fashion is a fitting slate for the
message, as immigrants from a
wide variety of backgrounds in
recent years have charted
remarkable rises in the field.
Thailand-born Thakoon Panichgul, Behnaz Sarafpour, born in
Iran, and evening-wear
designer Monique Lhuillier,
born in the Philippines, are
just a few of the designers
pollinating the industry
with new ideas. Despite a
powerful fashion establishment, it is still possible to find designers
whose meteoric rises
echo Michelle
Obama’s own.
Carefully
thought-out

T

All that sparkle:
The white ball
gown by
Taipei-born
Jason Wu.

Style code: Michelle Obama’s inauguration-day dress was designed by Cuban-born Isabel Toledo.
messages were present, too, in
the outfits of the Obamas’
daughters. The ensembles
picked out for 10-year-old Malia
and seven-year-old Sasha
appeared calibrated for challenging economic times. Jenna
and Barbara Bush were outfitted
in high-end Badgley Mischka for
the 2005 inauguration’s evening
festivities. But Malia’s periwinkle blue coat and Sasha’s bubble-gum pink coat—as well as
potential evening ensembles
that weren’t seen by the public
since the girls skipped the inaugural balls—were designed by
American retailer J.Crew,
according to the label.
For the children, it was important “to make sure that they were
wearing things that were festive
but not out of reach for many
Americans”, says Patricia Mears,
deputy director for the museum
at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. “The underlying message of this momentous occasion is that she’s standing up and saying that Americans make great designs, and
‘I’m going to stand as a symbol
for American creativity’.”
Barack Obama, whose attire
has been far less scrutinized than
his wife’s, also opted for American-made evening attire, with a
classic tuxedo by Chicago suit
maker Hart Schaffner Marx.
To be sure, Michelle Obama
does not make her style choices

alone. She appears to rely heavily
on Ikram Goldman, the owner of
the high-end Ikram boutique in
Chicago, to steer her towards
designers and runway looks that
would work for her. Wu, for
example, came to design the
$3,510 (about Rs1.72 lakh) silk
shift dress that she wore to a
November interview with Barbara Walters after Goldman saw
the style at his spring 2009 runway show in September and put
in a special order. Also, designers
from all price ranges have been
lobbying Michelle Obama to
wear their clothing since it’s
become clear that almost anything the 45-year-old former lawyer wears sparks a buying frenzy
and copycat looks.
But she has the final say. Late
in the afternoon on 20 January,
for example, a spokeswoman for
the First Lady said she hadn’t
decided till then which gown
she would wear for the inaugural balls, and made her choice
when she returned from the
parade to change clothes.
Wu, a designer whose work
only recently got picked up by
major stores such as Nordstrom,
says that when Goldman contacted him in November,
requesting a formal gown for an
unspecified event, she only had
one request: “Sparkle”. While Wu
says he didn’t dare to hope that
the dress might be for the inaugural balls, he felt pressure to

produce a gown that would convey many things for “a moment
of history: It had to be powerful,
beautiful, striking and convey her
exuberance and intelligence”.
Wu, who worked with a team
“sewing night and day” for a
week in December to produce
the dress, says he chose white
because “it’s a bold colour—nothing’s cleaner than
white”. He used a modern, oneshouldered silhouette to give a
hint of sexiness without showing
too much skin and added
Swarovski crystal flowers for a
“dream-like” effect.
Michelle Obama’s inauguration-day choices, though still
edgy in her choice of designers,
seemed just a touch safer than
her usual fare. The dress she
wore for morning church services
and the swearing-in ceremony
was conservatively high-necked
and fit loosely, unlike the bodyconscious shifts she wore while
still on the campaign trail. The
soft, rather coquettish inauguralball gown posed a sharp contrast
to the bold looks and striking
shades of purple and crimson
that have marked her style.
As time passes, will her sartorial choices become more conservative? Will she be less likely
to take chances on the Jason
Wus of the world? Fans of the US
fashion industry hope not.
Write to wsj@livemint.com

L14

www.livemint.com

SATURDAY, JANUARY 31, 2009

Play

LOUNGE

TIMELINE

Just one more thing
B Y K RISH R AGHAV

With Steve Jobs’ health a concern, what
will happen to the iconic ‘stevenote’? We
look at 25 years of classic presentations

krish.r@livemint.com

····························
pple CEO Steve Jobs is a
master showman, and
the “stevenote” his
greatest spell.
The colloquial term for his
annual keynote speeches, usually given at events such as the
annual Macworld Expo or the
Worldwide Developers Conference, stevenotes are often
where new Apple products
(among them the iPhone,
iPod and iMac) are first
revealed to the world. Jobs’
mastery of the presentation,
however, transforms mere
speeches into pop culture artefacts, and mystifies an audience of largely reasonable individuals into giddy, excitable
converts at the altar of personal electronics.

A

MATTHEW YOHE

Consequently, stevenotes
have a strange, almost chaos
theory-like effect—stock prices
vary wildly after each presentation, and much cheering and
whooping follow even the most
minor of announcements.
So, geeks and journalists
were aghast when Apple
announced on 16 December
that Jobs would miss Macworld
2009, held from 5-9 January.
There were rumours of health
complications and later, Jobs
left on a half-year break from
work. Experts think this heralds the end of stevenotes.
From all the dramatic flourishes, maddening suspense
and furious speculation to the
pulse-quickening thrill of Jobs’
trademark “one more thing...”
coda, we draw up a timeline of
the best (and rare worst) of
Jobsian showmanship.

THE CLASSICS:
MARCO MIOLI/ALL ABOUT APPLE

1983 FALL SALES MEETING

Jobs’ Fall 1983 stevenote at an Apple
sales event introduced Apple as
“the force that can ensure freedom
from an IBM-dominated world”.
The now-legendary “1984”
advertisement, directed by Ridley
Scott, was previewed and the original
Macintosh unveiled.

1984 MACINTOSH LAUNCH

Now a YouTube classic, the image of the
bow-tied Jobs unveiling the Macintosh at an
Apple shareholders’ meet is a textbook example
of sheer showmanship.
The next 13 years would be the dark ages of
the stevenote, spent in the murky depths of
NeXT obscurity, before Jobs returned to a
beleaguered and broken Apple in 1997.
Showstopper: Steve
Jobs holds up the
Macbook Air at
Macworld 2008.

1997-2008:
1998 MACWORLD NEW YORK

1997 MACWORLD BOSTON

1999 MACWORLD
NEW YORK

The 1998 stevenote was a
remarkable return to form for
showman Jobs—flashy, expensive
products and an almost masterful
command of the adoring and
constantly cheering audience. The
original iMac and the Powerbook G3
were unveiled, and Apple’s return to
profitability was announced in
perhaps the first “one more thing...”

The return of the stevenote was a
near-disaster. Jobs announced, amid much
booing, an alliance with Microsoft (Internet
Explorer became the Mac’s official browser,
and in what would go down as perhaps the
most disappointing Macworld launch
announcement yet, Office 98 was
announced for the Mac).

The original iBook was
unveiled, with a trademark
Jobsian flourish for seemingly
minor features—in this case,
the laptop’s apparently
revolutionary “handle”.
Apple’s Airport Wireless
service was revealed in a
“one more thing...”

MASASHIGE MOTOE

APPLE COMPUTER

JARED C BENEDICT
FHKE

2000

2001

MACWORLD
SAN FRANCISCO

The first stevenote of the new
century consolidated and
clarified Apple’s strategy for the
years ahead. The stylish, robust
OS X operating system was
shown, and the toaster-like
Powermac G4 Cube was launched
(it went on to become one of
Apple’s rare flops).

2003 MACWORLD

2004 MACWORLD

The 17-inch and 12-inch
Powerbook were unveiled, and
a long-standing source of
annoyance within the Mac
community was resolved when
Safari ousted Internet Explorer
as the official browser. Apple’s
presentation suite Keynote
made its appearance.

Jobs, with a ragged beard and
looking rather unwell, unveiled
the ace up Apple’s sleeve—the
small, mid-capacity
multicoloured iPod mini—and
music software GarageBand was
the latest addition to the iLife
suite (which included iTunes
and iPhoto).

SAN FRANCISCO

SAN FRANCISCO

2006 MACWORLD
SAN FRANCISCO

Intel CEO Paul Otellini
joined Jobs on stage to
announce Apple’s historic
shift to Intel processors. The
first Intel Macs were
unveiled, as was the
Macbook Pro, in a “one
more thing...”

2007 MACWORLD SAN FRANCISCO

“This is a day I’ve been looking
forward to for two-and-a-half years,”
said Jobs at the start of his 2007
stevenote—proceeding to pile on
the hype and hyperbole for the
launch of the iPhone, a device that
had been awaited eagerly for so
long that journalists immediately
dubbed it the “Jesus phone”.

CUPERTINO EVENT

In what is now inexplicable, the
original iPod was launched at a
nondescript, oddly somnolent
event in Cupertino, California.
While Jobs, with his solid,
reasoned defence of the device,
appeared convinced of Apple’s
decision to make a music
player, the audience was
strangely silent and tepid.

2008 MACWORLD
SAN FRANCISCO

The 2008 Macworld
saw logical updates to
Apple’s existing products;
iPhone went 3G and
the Macbook Air was
pulled out of a manila
envelope in a classic
Jobs moment.

APPLE COMPUTER

2001 MACWORLD
SAN FRANCISCO

It was a more sombre affair, with
Jobs concentrating on hardware
upgrades to existing laptop lines
and unveiling the “Superdrive”,
which could read and write DVDs.
The then seemingly unimportant
iTunes was also launched and Jobs
called it “the hub” of their new
digital entertainment strategy.

2005 MACWORLD
SAN FRANCISCO

A much healthier Jobs launched
the iPod Shuffle, and unveiled
the Mac Mini, which got loud
cheers when its ultra-low price
(by Apple standards, that is) of
$499 (around Rs24,500 now)
was announced.

2009 MACWORLD SAN FRANCISCO

Apple announced that this would
be their last appearance at the cult
conference. Jobs declined to speak
and was replaced by Philip
Schiller, Apple’s senior
vice-president of worldwide
product marketing. On 14 January,
Jobs announced that he was going
on a six-month leave of absence.

www.livemint.com

SATURDAY, JANUARY 31, 2009

L15

Insider

LOUNGE

G FABIANO/SIPA PRESS/WSJ

HOMES

Extreme makeover: presidential edition
SIMON UPTON/WSJ

White House carbon footprint—with a public accounting.
Show us where to look for the big
energy drains in all our homes.
Next, the low-hanging fruit:
Find the hundreds of ways to be
more energy efficient. The White
House can upgrade insulation and
install more light-emitting diodes
inside—these use one-third the
electricity of compact fluorescents
and contain no toxic mercury.
The Obamas can also get serious about energy production.
What about digging under that
expansive lawn and installing a
geothermal system to generate
energy using heat stored in the
earth? According to Jackson Robinson, who manages Bostonbased Winslow Green Growth,
which invests in sustainable public companies, “the technology

In a surprise move, the Obamas select a
high-profile—and high-spending—LA-based
designer to redo family quarters

B Y D OMINIQUE B ROWNING
····························
tyle watchers are buzzing
about Michael Smith, the
Los Angeles (LA) decorator
to stars, models and fund managers, who is joining the Obamas
in Washington to design the
family quarters. He’s a surprising
pick, if only because he is associated with clients such as Cindy
Crawford and Steven Spielberg,
for whom the concept of a budget is impressionistic at best
(Rupert Murdoch, chairman of
News Corp., which owns The
Wall Street Journal (WSJ), is also
a client. WSJ has an exclusive
content partnership with Mint).
Michelle Obama’s press office
praised Smith’s “family-focused
and affordable approach”, but I
doubt even he can remember
when he last accepted a $100,000
(around Rs48 lakh) limit—that’s
what is earmarked for the presidential family quarters—unless
that was the budget for window
treatments. Private donations will
subsidize this project. The connection to Smith was made
through incoming White House
social secretary Desiree Rogers, a
friend of one of Smith’s important
Chicago clients, realtor Katherine
Chez and her companion Judd
Malkin, an important Democratic
Party donor.
Smith is a national star. He
makes classic rooms that look like
their owners have inherited
money and furnishings, and he
mixes things up with tastefully hip
pieces—just as he wears Keds and
John Lobb custom shoes. The
Obamas made it clear during
their campaign that they would
not tolerate divas, another reason
Smith is a startling pick, but he’s
smart enough to know when to
respect protocol. Smith declined
to comment.
As goes the cabinet, so goes the
cabinetry. Smith’s qualifications

S

are strong: This is no time for the
inexperienced, particularly if the
at-home style of the Obamas
reflects anything of their public
personae. We can expect that the
private quarters will embrace
what in decorating parlance is
called an eclectic style—America’s favourite in every survey.
That sounds like anything goes,
but is far from it, quite difficult to
pull off gracefully.
Smith said in a press release
that he plans to bring “20th century American artists to the forefront”. Let’s hope he also turns to
America’s artisans, such as potter
Frances Palmer, weavers Jamie
Gould, Elizabeth Jackson and
Angela Adams, and designers
Stephanie Odegard and Katie Ridder. But for now, you can expect
to hear lots of talk about shopping
at Ikea and West Elm, at least for
the girls’ rooms; Smith is savvy
enough to know that it isn’t in the
Obamas’ interests to give the
impression that they have
launched a bailout for the highend design industry.
Apart from the Oval Office, I’d
like to submit a vote that, unless
things are in tatters, the public
rooms be left alone. If refreshing
is needed, the White House can
be a model of what I’m calling the
Borrow Economy—sharing the
stuff in our closets. The White
House collection fills warehouses.
Instead, the Obamas should
invest their $1.6 million restoration budget in...yes, infrastructure! They can become leaders in
green living. Our homes are
labouring under outmoded systems. While campaigning, Barack
Obama stated that we should
achieve an 80% reduction in carbon emissions by 2050. Home is
the place to start: Obama can
advance his agenda, lower White
House operating costs, and, best
of all, support American industry.
First up, a thorough audit of the

SIMON UPTON/WSJ

First style: (clockwise from
top) Laura Bush updated
the design of the famous
guest bedroom, The Lincoln
Bedroom; the design world
is buzzing over the Obamas’
radical choice of Michael
Smith to update the White
House; Smith uses
extremely expensive
products and upholstery, as
in this living room at a
beach house and a guest
bedroom at his home.
JOAO CANZIANI/CORBIS OUTLINE/WSJ

already exists to lower heating
and cooling costs by 70%—and it
is American technology. The two
leading geothermal-heat-pump
companies are based in our
heartland, in Indiana and Oklahoma.” The Obamas could document the work online; the White
House website is filled with pretty
pictures of tulips, but it could do
more to show us how to live
responsibly. Let the building
industry teach—and learn.
Then climb to the rooftop, and
shout it out: thin film solar!
Remember when president
Carter put in solar panels, which
were admittedly ungainly—and
the Reagans took them out? Now
there is technology for wrapping
the rooftop with sheets that
unobtrusively take in solar
energy, and can withstand Category 5 hurricanes. And the best
available flexible thin film in the
world is being made in Michigan,
by Energy Conversion Devices,
one of the fastest growing new
energy companies.
A few green acres carved out of
that gloriously sunny lawn (irrigated with a “grey water system”
that uses water from the showers
and sinks for the lawn and gardens) will supply enough organically grown fruits and vegetables
to feed the first family and
friends—send the surplus to food
banks or schools for their lunch
programmes. Let’s hope the
Obamas become “locavores”, getting their meat and poultry from
the area’s small farms.
Environmentalists have a culture war on their hands, whether
or not they acknowledge it. Their
values haven’t yet been translated
appealingly to enough people. But
we’re now in times when we can
surely appreciate what most of
this boils down to: habits of thrift,
modesty, order and discipline.
They’re still part of our national
DNA, though recessive, perhaps.
We need a values shift of epic
proportions. A green lifestyle
shouldn’t be an unaffordable status symbol; it has to become
mainstream. With the Obamas’
leadership, America can trace a
path to a more compassionate,
respectful and sustainable way of
keeping house.
Write to wsj@livemint.com

····························
t the age of 10, there is
nothing cooler than science class: dissecting
cockroaches and frogs, growing
mould on bread and building volcanoes that spew baking soda
lava. Science seems a veritable
playground filled with untold
mysteries and strange substances.
But somewhere along the way,
and especially by the time we
reach university, the electric wires
and Bunsen burners continue to
fascinate only a small sect of men
and women in white lab coats.
Along the way, science somehow
loses its mojo.
In her new book, The Canon,
Natalie Angier, a Pulitzer Prizewinning New York Times science
reporter, bemoans the fact that
the general population is moving
further and further from the
“beautiful basics of science”.
Angier interviewed hundreds
of scientists, breaking down their
explanations of the basics and
writing it all up in a neat
264-page package. She says in
her introduction: “Science is
huge, a great ocean of human
experience; it’s the product and
point of having the most deeply
corrugated brain of any species
this planet has spawned. If you
never learn to swim, you’ll surely
regret it; and the sea is so big, it
won’t let you forget it.”
To ease her readers in, Angier
starts with an impassioned chapter on “thinking scientifically”,
admonishing generations of high
school science teachers for taking
the fun out of science. In Angier’s
view, science is a great adventure—mulling over the moon’s
shadow, appreciating the blush of

A

Microscopic: Angier breaks down complex theories into simple facts.
a red rose, and even fixing a broken DVD player.
A few chapters on probabilities and calibrations gently lead
the reader further into the rabbit
hole—by creating strong visuals
to help picture the distance from
an atom’s neutron to its electron
and from the earth to the next
solar system; adding quick
descriptions of complicated
experiments parsed into a few
pithy paragraphs; and suggesting simple experiments for readers to practise.
Angier believes that people
need science to intelligently
choose politicians, understand
medical testing and discount false
prophets. She harps on people’s
surprise over coincidences such
as finding out that you share a
birthday with the person you’re
talking to at a cocktail party. She
says that the improbability of
finding two people in a group of
65 with a matching birth date
rests below 1%. It took questioning only 32 people in my office to
find two people who shared 13
June as their date of birth and two

others who shared 30 April. It
may not be as much fun as shouting, “Oh my god! We were born
Geminis!”, but there is also something mysterious and exciting
about the precision with which
these experiments work.
After the first few chapters,
Angier leaps into various subdivisions, spurring us through
physics, chemistry, biology, geology and astronomy in a whirlwind, condensing years of science classes into a few pages.
Her skill as a news writer comes
in handy in translating obtuse
scientific terms and processes
into explanations that even a
reader who nearly failed those
very science classes (myself
included) can understand.
Angier’s work is occasionally
stymied by her own verbal wordplay. She relies on bad jokes and
silly puns to create mnemonic
devices: “If a neutron were to
order a drink at the bar, and then
ask how much it owed, the bartender would reply, ‘For you, no
charge’.” The joke breaks up the
monotony of re-learning the dif-

ference between neutrons, protons and electrons. But at other
times, her way with words obfuscates concepts. In explaining an
experiment on what separates
worker bees from foraging bees,
Angier writes: “Through each evidentiary strand, and every corresponding control, still the discovery held. Unless the foraging gene
blazed on, the bee didn’t budge. A
modest finding perhaps, but one
chiselled and polished until it was
the bees knees.”
Angier also loses her logical,
fun, objective touch when talking
about evolution. It’s easy to see
which side she is on when it
comes to the great debate
between Creationists and Darwinism, especially with a cover
quote by leading atheist Richard
Dawkins, the author of The God
Delusion and financier of the
recent bus advertisements in
London that read: “There probably is no God. Now stop worrying
and enjoy your life.”
Angier does little to hide her
disapproval of the Creationist
theory: “The Creationists’ clock
is—what’s the word for ‘off by six
orders of magnitude’?—cuckoo.”
In a chapter dedicated to evolutionary biology, she writes, “I’m
always surprised at how often I
encounter resistance toward or
doubts about Darwinism among
otherwise rational people.”
Condescension directed at the
very people you’re talking isn’t
the most sound negotiating tool.
However, Angier has convinced
at least one science sceptic that
atoms, stars and cells can
indeed be fun.
IN SIX WORDS
A quick remedy for science phobia

u Laurel-Hardy
Last year was not a bad one for South Asian fiction. Four authors
of South Asian origin were on the Booker longlist and the prize
was bagged by one of them. But then the Sahitya Akademi struck
back: No Indian English book was “found eligible for the honour”
of an Akademi award in 2008.
ANDREW HARRER/BLOOMBERG
1:0 in favour of bhasha literature
(literature in Indian languages)?
An ungracious controversy has
been raging between some
writers of bhasha literature and
Indian English authors for
decades now. On the one side,
Indian English authors are
accused of being superficial, on
the other—most famously by
Salman Rushdie—bhasha writers
are dismissed as not good
enough. Was the Akademi’s
decision to ignore Indian English
Anti-provincial: Rushdie famously
books a consequence of this?
dismissed bhasha writers.
Whatever the reason, this
controversy caricatures issues on
all sides. It also leaves Indian literature in English out in the cold.
For there are Indian literatures in English, not just Indian English
literature. The stuff shortlisted for the Booker is decent
literature—but often of a certain type, in terms of politics, theme,
style, etc. Other kinds of literature are written in English by Indians
too. The Sahitya Akademi would have done us a favour by looking
at these alternatives to the grand/global narratives of Booker India.
One need not copy the Laurel-Hardy act of Booker-Nobel:
fat-thin, bing-bong, topical-forgotten. The Booker tends to go to
talented writers who, it seems, are yet to write their best novels.
The Nobel is tending to go to talented writers who wrote their
best books many years ago. But these are not the only options
that the Sahitya Akademi has; no, not in the various nooks and
corners of Indian literature in English.
u Fashion vs Fanon
My favourite 2008 novel was John Edgar Wideman’s Fanon.
Rooted in marginalized African-American experiences (his brother
and son are in prison for major crimes), the novel fictionalizes the
story of Frantz Fanon (1925-1961). Caribbean-born, educated as a
psychiatrist in France, Fanon participated in the Algerian
revolution and authored anti-colonial studies such as Black Skin,
White Masks. By inserting himself into the text as the narrator,
Wideman transposes Fanon’s revolutionary struggle on to
contemporary times. The oppression of European colonization,
captured in Fanon’s story, is superimposed on the killing fields of
Iraq and America’s overflowing prisons. The two illuminate—or
rather darken—one another. A raw, risky book. And though the
author-narrator claims there is “no way out of this goddamn
mess”, the novel—due to its unfashionable courage in narrating
the “mess” with unblinking eyes—makes one hope. Fashion: 0.
Fanon:1. Finally!
u Oxford comma
“Who cares a f*** about the Oxford comma,” sing Vampire
Weekend in one of the better songs that made the top charts in
2008. The song was “inspired” by a Columbia University society:
Students for the Preservation of the Oxford Comma. Though I
buy the John Agard point being guitared by the Afro-pop band, I
confess that whenever someone emails 2 me 4 something, I do
get anxious about the Oxford comma.
Born in Gaya, Bihar, Tabish Khair is a Denmark-based author
whose last book was Filming: A Love Story.
Write to Tabish at readingroom@livemint.com

NEXT DOOR | JAHNAVI BARUA

By the Brahmaputra
Portraits of Assamese people deeply
attached to their land and home
B Y C HANDRAHAS C HOUDHURY
····························
or the great American short
story writer Eudora Welty, fiction’s reach and its themes were
universal, but at the same time, the
power of a story was “all bound up
in the local”. Her simple explanation for this was that human feelings, which are the source and also
the subject of all fiction, are inextricably bound up with place.
Like trees, human beings have
roots in particular places. Further, they are also marked by
place in their thought, speech,
imagination, food and dress.
Place, as seen through the filter of
the human mind, is a kind of
extension of the self. To tell the
stories of people properly, we
must also tell the stories of places.

F

Next Door:
Penguin,
232 pages, Rs250.

ANUPAM NATH/AP

Indeed, it is the strength of feeling with respect to place that distinguishes the stories of Jahnavi
Barua’s debut collection of stories,
Next Door. Barua’s stories are set
in Assam—a territory under-represented in Indian fiction in
English—and they glow with affection (demonstrated by both the
narrator and the characters) for the
region’s forests and fields, for the
surging, life-giving Brahmaputra
river that cuts a swathe through
the state, and the sun that wheels
over the land all day and sinks
finally “behind the dark hills of
Bhutan”. Further—and this is one
way of bringing out the peculiar
power dynamics in Indian families—many of Barua’s characters
either feel trapped by their houses
and live in bitterness and resentment, or else love their homes and
their gardens intensely, and can be
found in their vicinity all day long.
In one of the best of these stories, The Patriot, we are shown a
retired government servant,
Dhiren Majumdar, and his two
houses. One is the old, dilapidated
house in which he grew up, and

Setting sail: The river is a backdrop for Barua’s stories.
which he cannot knock down. The
other is the smaller dwelling alongside, which was all he could afford
to build for his family. Every morning, Majumdar sits down in his
compound with a cup of tea, and
“examine(s) his kingdom as if he
were seeing it for the very first
time”. One evening, Majumdar
sees a flicker of movement in his
old house and is alarmed. He goes
across to investigate and finds a
youth lying in the darkness, badly
injured. The boy is an insurgent,
and he wants Majumdar to get
him medicine and food, and to
keep his presence a secret.
Majumdar has a grown-up son
who is a successful civil servant,

but somehow there is no feeling
between them—indeed, he feels
abject before his son, as he used to
before his superiors at work.
Now, as Majumdar huffs and
puffs under the burden of the arrogant young insurgent’s demands,
we feel—although Barua never
states this explicitly—that he is
being fulfilled as a father for the
first time. Barua delicately grafts
the bloodshed and violence of the
insurgency on to the pathos and
neediness of the old man’s life.
Many of the other stories in Next
Door also take the relationship
between parents and children as
their theme. In Sour Green Mangoes, we experience the frustration

of a young woman, Madhumita, at
the way her ageing parents control
every aspect of her life, and here
Barua’s writing works beautifully to
portray the home as a prison. With
time, Madhumita has learnt to
harass her parents, yet even this
gives her no satisfaction, for she
knows it is yet another symptom of
her condition. “She will not let
them defeat her now,” writes Barua,
“but what was done was done; she
has already become what she is
today.” This is an observation of
great empathy and subtlety.
Not all the stories in Next Door
are written to an equal standard.
Some strike the reader as ripening buds—to use a metaphor
consistent with Barua’s
work—rather than flowers in full
bloom. At times the plotting
seems slightly shaky, and there
are points when the dialogue
seems to hit the wrong notes. Yet
there are many deft touches to be
found on these pages, and this is
a striking debut that marks its
author as someone to watch.
Write to lounge@livemint.com

····························
he design for a new wing at
the National Gallery of
Modern Art (NGMA), New
Delhi, was finalized in 1985. Twenty-three years later, the new wing
has been opened to the public.
It could have taken longer.
Rajeev Lochan, the director of
NGMA, assumed his post in
2001. “Seven months after I
joined,” he recalls, “I was forced
to do the Picasso exhibition at
the National Museum.” The lack
of space at Jaipur House—which
houses the original wing of the
NGMA and is situated right next
to India Gate—to host a major
show prompted Lochan to push
for the construction of the additional wing. “It was all in planning already,” he says. “I was
only the catalyst.”
Thus far, only 4% of the NGMA’s
permanent collection could be displayed in the relatively limited
confines of Jaipur House. With the
new wing, this figure will go up to
24%. The new wing consists of
three interconnected blocks constructed adjacent to and behind
Jaipur House. Despite being much
bigger, the new structure blends in
with the surroundings. All the
works in the two inaugural shows
are from the museum’s permanent
collection: ...In the seeds of time
traces the evolution of modern art
in India, and Rhythms of India: The
art of Nandalal Bose shows about
85 works by the master.
“The new wing looks very
attractive from the outside,” says
photographer Raghu Rai, who had
a retrospective exhibition at the
NGMA last year. But he found the
interiors disappointing. “It is so
open and naked,” he says. “It
doesn’t contain the space. I’ll hesitate to have a retrospective here.”
Besides finding the space,
which is split into four levels, “too
large and overwhelming”, Rai
also finds the lighting inadequate.
“It is very ordinary,” he says. “The
ceiling and the AC ducts—everything is too visible.” Rai, however,
is all praise for Lochan for seeing
the project through. “He pushed
and pushed, and got it (the new
wing) open.”
Rai’s view of the NGMA—one
that is echoed by many artists—is
that it has been a largely ineffectual institution hobbled by red
tape and lack of vision. “It is

T

Labour of love: Rajeev Lochan.

L17

A new leaf? (top) Inside the new NGMA wing; and at the museum store.
sarkari (bureaucratic), run by the
sarkar (government) and the
director becomes helpless,” he
says. A telling example, he points
out, is something as simple as the
museum visiting hours, 10am to
5pm—which is clearly an
unthinking replication of government office hours. Lochan’s
response is equally telling, “It is
not in my hands but the (culture
and tourism) ministry’s.”
Photographer Pablo Bartholomew, who had his own show at the
National Museum last year, also
feels that like most government
institutions meant to promote culture, the NGMA’s functioning
leaves much to be desired. He
grants that budgets can be a constraint but says the problems run
deeper. “You can always trot out 10
million excuses but basically, there
is a lack of vision,” he says. “The
new building is a shell. Let’s see
whether the new space will be a living space or a mausoleum.”
New Delhi-based artist Vivan
Sundaram echoes this sentiment.
“My perception is that even
though the space (in the old wing)
is limited, much more could have
been done,” he says. He admits
that granting greater autonomy to
the museum director would go
some way in improving things.
“(The director) should demand

The new
building is a
shell. Let’s see
whether it will
be a living space
or a mausoleum.
Pablo Bartholomew
Photographer

greater permission so that he
can’t use it as an excuse that
‘every nail I have to knock
requires permission’.”
Sundaram points out that with
the Indian art scene increasingly
more active and dynamic, the gap
between it and the NGMA is widening. He is clear, however, that
private galleries, auction houses
and wealthy buyers can never be a
substitute for museums meant for
the general public. “Private art is
for a niche, moneyed class. There
is a huge middle class that wants
to see art but can’t buy it,” he says.
Sundaram feels museums here
lag when it comes to showing
cutting-edge work. He suggests
that they should make their
shows more inclusive when it
comes to new media.
“I have a museum, not a gallery,” says Lochan, countering
accusations of the latest trends
being ignored. He says that
encouraging and supporting practising artists is the job of galleries;
museums are meant for those
who have “arrived and achieved”.
He points out that the NGMA
bought works by contemporary
artists such as Subodh Gupta,
Jitesh Kallat and Chintan Upadhyaya before they became big
names, adding that even among
contemporary artists, only those
who have “proved their worth”
can be acquired by a museum.
Lochan is at pains to point out
that he has organized around 80
shows in his seven-and-a-halfyear tenure. Whether it is
increasing the number of outreach programmes, setting up
new artist-in-residence programmes or a video-art library, or
opening a museum shop and
café, he says plans are “in the
pipeline”. Quizzed about bureaucratic interference, he sounds an
optimistic note: “Working within
the government structure, if this
annexe could be made, then
other things are possible too.”

WHAT ARE YOU SAYING?

SIDIN VADUKUT

THAT KNIGHT IN HIS
SHINY GOLD PLATING
What does everyone’s favourite movie have to do with
everyone’s favourite trophy?
Unless you’ve been living under a rock somewhere with no
phones, mobile network or wireless Internet, you’ve probably
heard of Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire. Just when it
seemed that the whole world had exhausted its supply of gleeful
fanatic adoration of Barack Obama, there comes along this
movie that most people love and a few people—including
Amitabh Bachchan, we hear—had issues with.
By now you’ve probably seen the movie already. And tweeted
your opinion about it, even before you left the multiplex.
Boyle’s masterpiece has already won those Golden Globes
and several other lesser prizes at film festivals. The movie has
also garnered a stunning 10 Oscar nominations, including nods
for best movie, best director, best music, best song and best
adapted screenplay. And, going by that Aravind Adiga-esque
feeling in the gut, we should be seeing Boyle and company
walk away with at least a couple of golden statuettes—perhaps
AFP
even one of the
important ones.
Which nicely brings
us to the trivial
pursuit of this
fortnight’s column.
Surely you know
that the statuette
given away each year
at the Oscars is
known as the
Academy Award for
Merit? It is made of
an alloy called
Britannium, plated
with gold, and weighs
a hefty 3.85kg.
The imagery of the
naked man with the
strategically held
sword in front is one
of the most iconic in
the world. Film
professionals work
their entire lives to
get one of those art
deco statues. People
like us wake up early
in the morning and
sit in front of our TVs
to see them win the
trophy and then cry,
holler or even rant
like Michael Moore.
Swordsman: The statuette was modelled
Film studio
after a little-known Mexican actor.
Metro-GoldwynMayer’s art director
Cedric Gibbons created the Oscar statue around 1928. Gibbons,
a trendsetting art director, was an original member of the
academy, and so was a natural choice to design the prize. When
he was hunting for a suitable male model for the prize,
Gibbons’ wife told him to try using Mexican actor Emilio
Fernandez (quite how Mrs Gibbons knew how Fernandez
looked naked is worth mulling over).
Fernandez reluctantly agreed to model naked and the rest is
film history. Gibbons, incidentally, would win 11 Oscars himself.
Only Walt Disney has won more.
While there is no discounting his achievements as an art
director and designer, Gibbons was not without his foibles. For
some odd reason, some believe he fabricated the fact that he
was born in Dublin, Ireland. He also tried to pass himself off as
an architectural engineer when, in fact, he wasn’t one.
These details, of course, would have no bearing on his
performance as an art director. He was a very good one and he
knew it. So much so that his contract with MGM in 1924
insisted that every movie MGM released in the US credit him as
the art director, even if he didn’t do any work at all (which
explains the 1,500 or so movies credited to him).
But when he did work on movies, he was outstanding. He
won an Oscar for almost one in every 15 movies he was
personally involved in. By the time he retired in 1956, Gibbons
was considered one of the fathers of art direction.
And even in the year he retired, Gibbons is credited with
18 projects, including Lust For Life, which was nominated for
an Oscar. Another one of those 18 was the musical High
Society, starring Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly, Frank Sinatra and
Louis Armstrong.
High Society received positive reviews and did well at the box
office. The soundtrack came in for great praise and was a
success on both sides of the Atlantic. It was composed entirely
by Cole Porter and had great performances by Kelly, Crosby
and, of course, Sinatra.
The particular track we are interested in was
performed by Sinatra and Celeste Holm. The song that
celebrates the pleasures of a simple life was called Who
Wants To Be A Millionaire?
In 1998, when producers were looking for a name for a novel
quiz show format with just one contestant featured at a time,
they decided to pick the name of the song from High Society.
So will Boyle’s movie, based on the quiz show named after a
song from a movie designed by Gibbons, win a statuette? We
will know in about three weeks.
Write to Sidin at whatareyousaying@livemint.com

L18

www.livemint.com

SATURDAY, JANUARY 31, 2009

Travel

LOUNGE

FOOT NOTES | SUMANA MUKHERJEE

48 weeks, 30 must-visits
Why Bangladesh,
Rwanda and
Lebanon must
make it to your
vacation planner
this year

F

orty-eight weeks left in the
year, and that includes at
least three weeks of vacation. Where will you holiday?
Exclusive Top 10 extracts from
Lonely Planet’s Best in Travel
2009 (formerly Lonely Planet
Bluelist)—which lists 850 trends,
destinations, journeys and experiences—narrow it down for you
and tell you why these 30 destinations are must-visits.

Hand-picked: (clockwise from
above) Ice-fishing huts dot the
bleak wilderness in
L’anse-St-Jean, Quebec, Canada;
the Maronite Christian parade in
a Beirut suburb is in sharp
contrast to the city’s war-weary
concrete expanses; and a
monastery in Yunnan, China.

TOP 10 COUNTRIES

• Lisbon, Portugal

Glasgow for the cocktails, cuisine and designer chic (plus
the legendary native wit).

• Algeria

Peace. For most Algerians, the
simple pleasures the rest of us
take for granted…feel like being
able to breathe again.

• Bangladesh

A revelation that actually
leaves India looking a little
worse for wear.

• Canada

Winter or summer, Canada is a
land of action, with an insane
amount of terrain to play on.

• Georgia

A fascinating culture, a realm
where the welcome is spontaneous, where the landscape is
breathtaking, and where travel is
still a challenge…

• Greenland

• Peru

(Try) falling asleep in a hammock as you float away down
the Amazon, waking up just in
time to catch (the) dawn over
the world’s second-longest river.

• Rwanda

The tough terrain will be nothing more than a distant memory
once you find yourself face to
face with a 200kg silverback.

• Sierra Leone

We know what you’re thinking.
Blood Diamonds. Child soldiers.
Summary amputations. But that
was then…

splendid emerald curves is the
distilled, 80-proof version of traditional Chile.

• Hawai’i (The Big Island),
Hawaii

This oversized, “hang loose,
brah” place has all the necessary
tropical delights (plus lavaspewing volcanoes!), and it’s
less crowded and less expensive.

• Ko Tao, Thailand

…tiny Tao sure knows how to
pack it in—there’s something for
everyone, and nothing is in
moderation.

The difference here is that the
words of welcome, the spirit of
religious tolerance, the preservation of the past…are the real deal.

TOP 10 REGIONS

It’s a country that’s so complicated its borders are marked on
no maps.
The secret edge of Tasmania,
laid out like a pirate’s treasure
map.
This misty archipelago with

Backpackers’ club
Sixteen countries over 40 days, a jungle trek,
and under suspicion of drug-peddling

Four guys with Schengen visas
and no itinerary. Whatever
possessed you to come up with
such a footloose plan?
Well, the plan had been on the
anvil for quite a while, actually.
We first began toying with the
idea of going backpacking three
years ago, but it kept getting
postponed. We also had a tough
time convincing our respective
wives to stay back with the kids!
Once that was done, we set

about acquiring the visas. Apart
from Schengen visas, we got
papers for Turkey, Romania and
Croatia. We applied for a
Bulgarian visa, but didn’t get it,
so we had to fly from Istanbul to
Budapest, instead of taking the
land route.
How did you go about choosing
your destinations?
That was the funniest part of all.
We’d take our place in individual
queues at various railway
stations and figure out two
important things: The longest
journey, which would allow us to
spend a night on the train and
thus save on accommodation,
and the cheapest tickets, as the
fast trains are much more
expensive than regular trains
covering the same distance.
Mostly, we would decide on the
spur of the moment.
Only twice did we board TGVs
(Train à Grande Vitesse),
high-speed trains that can touch
320km per hour (kmph). Fast

trains in India move at 120kmph
at the most.
And you ended up visiting 16
countries.
Yes. We ended up spending a
day and a half or two days at
each place. Let’s see, we started
with Greece, then went to
Turkey, Romania, Hungary, the
Czech Republic, Austria,
Slovenia, Slovakia, Croatia,
Poland, Germany, France,
Belgium, the Netherlands,
Monaco and Italy. Phew!
What would you pick as your
favourite places?
First, it’d be Pamukkale, a World
Heritage site in Turkey. Located
in the valley of the river
Menderes, it would be pretty
nondescript were it not for a
white, terraced mountain. From
what I understood, the mountain
is the result of the earth’s
movements and the chalk-heavy
composition of the water there.
Basically, the water has formed
these brilliant white stalactites in
some places; elsewhere, they still
cascade down in hot springs.
Next, Cappadocia, also in
Turkey. We arrived in Goreme, a
small town in Cappadocia,
famous for the fairy chimney
rock formations, at around
5-6am, after an overnight bus
journey. Dawn is the time when

• Svalbard, Norway

“Cold coast” in Norwegian,
this is Europe’s most northerly
landmass and the planet’s
northernmost permanently
inhabited spot.

• Yunnan, China

Yunnan is China distilled into
one superlative province and
offers more variety than any
other place in China. Period.

TOP 10 CITIES

• Antwerp, Belgium

There’s much more to this
city than the world’s best
variety of beer.

• Beirut, Lebanon

• Nam Ha National Protected
Area, Laos

Despite its weakness for all
that’s new and swanky, Beirut’s not entirely about the
hottest, priciest and glitziest.

• San Andrés and Providencia,
Colombia

If you want your finger on America’s pulse, don’t head to New
York or LA. The heart beats in
Chicago.

While a lesser girl would have
developed bags under her eyes
after all this partying, Lisbon has
simply become better with age.

• Mexico City, Mexico

Crossing the street in Mexico City
plays out like a scene from Death
Race 2000. No kidding.

• São Paulo, Brazil

Once typecast as the bad-boy city
of crime and pollution, São Paulo
has reinvented itself in recent
years, emerging as Brazil’s cultural behemoth.

• Shanghai, China

Racy architecture, charming
side streets and European verve
meet the clamour and energy
of the Chinese.

• Warsaw, Poland

Warsaw still has its work cut out
to become a world-class capital…but any visitor willing to
spend some time here will find
its energy and vibe infectious.

• Zürich, Switzerland

This is one city that definitely
changes its face after dark. That’s
when the pinstripe brigade yields
the streets to glam bar-hoppers
and clubbers…
Write to lounge@livemint.com

ABHIJIT SHILOTRI

Four adventurers: (from left) Ramprasad, Uppin, Shilotri and Simha
at the Acropolis in Athens, Greece.
25-30 hot-air balloons take off for
a bird’s-eye view of the extensive
natural formations, but at
Rs10,000 a ride, we felt it would
be too expensive for us
backpackers. So we headed
towards the caves, which the
early Christians built apparently
to escape invaders.
They go 18 storeys below the
ground. This is a place built for
adventure, actually, though there
are very real chances of getting
lost! So we also did a 3km jungle
trek with fellow backpackers from
Australia, Canada and Korea,
who we are still in touch with.
Next, Rhodes and Kos island
in Greece. These aren’t the

typical touristy beaches you’d
imagine, but tiny towns bustling
with activity. Lovely places to
hang up our shoes for a while.
Since you were on the
road so much, did you face
any danger?
The scariest experience was in
Vienna. One of us is dark and
big-built, and soon after he had
helped a black man with
directions, a plainclothes
policeman came up and started
asking questions, sniffed at his
cash and generally gave him a
real hard time. The rest of us
approached a police station,
where the personnel confirmed
that the man was indeed a

policeman working under cover
in VVIP areas to nab drug
dealers. We can have a good
laugh about it now but at that
moment we knew sheer panic.
Any low points?
Well, a trip such as this requires a
great deal of camaraderie: You
are thrown together for over a
month under what can be trying
circumstances—a sort of a Big
Brother on the move! Towards the
end of the trip, three of us fell out
with the fourth member of our
group and one of us actually left a
week before we were supposed to
return home. The lesson we
learnt is to do such trips only with
people we know and trust.
As told to Sumana Mukherjee
Share your last holiday with us at
lounge@livemint.com

GETTING THERE
The secret to a successful
road/train trip through Europe
lies in first forming a basic
itinerary: Every embassy where
you seek a visa will require it.
Once in Europe, a Eurail pass
(www.eurail.com) gives you the
liberty to go pretty much where
you please across 25 countries.